


East of the Sun and West of the Moon

by laulan



Category: Actor RPF, American Actor RPF, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Retellings, Found Family, M/M, Magic-Users, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-26
Updated: 2009-06-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 16:37:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10032572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laulan/pseuds/laulan
Summary: A practical carpenter, Jensen doesn’t believe in magic or fairytales--but when a messenger appears from thin air looking for him, he finds himself drawn into a quest to rescue a man he has no memory of, who just happens to be trapped in a place no one knows how to get to.  No pressure, right? Set in modern times with fantasy elements.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SPN/J2 Big Bang '09. All the art is by the absolutely lovely and unparalleled kaiserkuchen on LJ, my unbeatable art/story partner in crime. <3

_  
_

_  
_

_  
All around him there’s a sea of grass, broken only by a white tower leaning upwards into the light. The tower is tall and sharp--reaches to God knows where--and it gleams like a diamond, hurting his eyes where the light glances off its windows. The light itself is everywhere, filtered in through the screen of cool air until he can’t pick out its source. For miles and miles around, that’s all there is to see: endless grass, white tower, senseless light._  
  
_There’s something very wrong with this place. He knows--feels the wrongness tangling in his throat, making it hard to breathe. Something’s wrong, and it’s his job to fix it. Only he doesn’t know what_ it _is--just knows urgency, and the feeling that if he doesn’t fix it now--_  
  
“Jensen! _Jensen_.”  
  
Jensen blinks and shakes his head a little, focusing his gaze on his hands until his vision’s clear. “Yeah?” he asks, brushing a thumb over one edge of the blueprint like he’s been paying attention all along.  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Misha scowl. His friend shoves his safety goggles up into his spiky brown hair and leans over, frown boring into Jensen. “Yeah, right,” he says. “Don’t give me that shit. I called your name like five times, Jensen. What’s _up_ with you today?”  
  
Jensen squints at the legend on the blueprint. “Nothing,” he says, trying for absent. “So, you were saying that shipment of oak came in?” He blinks blandly at Misha.  
  
Misha’s scowl deepens. “Jensen, we’ve known each other for _how_ long, now? Our entire lives?” He snatches the blueprint out from Jensen’s unsuspecting hands and raises his eyebrows, two sharp, expectant lines on a pale forehead. Jensen grimaces and looks away, settling his gaze anywhere else.  
  
It’s a hot afternoon--the dizzy, lazy kind of heat that seeps into the pit of your stomach and turns you inside out till you can’t quite think anymore. Jensen can’t, anyway: he feels muffled and confused, and the tower keeps flickering back into his mind. But he’s not there, he reminds himself firmly. He’s in the shop he’s worked for the past seven years. Neat stacks of wood surround him, settled under clear counters, and Misha’s messy desk radiates chaos in contrast to Jensen’s neat one. Thick dust is speckling the sunbeams at the windows, and the air smells strongly of pine shavings and wood glue. No grassy fields in sight.  
  
But his heart's still thudding in his chest, and his stomach’s still aching with the knowledge that something’s wrong, wrong, _wrong_ \--  
  
He shoves it down, jaw tightening and hands clenched on the edge of the table. “Look, man, I’m sorry. Just a little tired, I guess.”  
  
“And why would that be?” Misha demands.  
  
Jensen sighs. “Fuck, Misha, you really gonna make me--? Goddammit.”  
  
He glares at the blueprint. He’d like nothing better than to just forget about this whole thing, because it’s _stupid_ , and has the added benefit of making him sound totally crazy, but Misha’s like a dog when he gets hold of a thought--won’t let it go for anything, tugs and growls at you till you finally give in.  
  
Jensen closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I just keep, uh. Having this weird dream I can’t stop thinking about, that’s all,” he mutters. Christ, saying it out loud makes it even worse.  
  
“Yeah?” Misha asks. “Well, what’s it about?”  
  
“Like-- _nothing_. There’s grass everywhere and this huge white tower, and I just keep feeling like something is really, really wrong with it all, and it’s my job to fix it. That's it. And before I figure out how, I wake up. Three nights in a row, now.” He shrugs, squints at nothing out the window. “See? Told you it was stupid.”  
  
But Misha’s still frowning, eyes shadowed with concern. “Recurring dreams are really indicative of your mental landscape, you know,” he says, crossing his arms.  
  
“God, I should have known you’d go yoga on me about this,” Jensen tries to joke. The air’s a little too thick for it. He abandons the table abruptly, pacing over to the sink to get a glass of water he’s not thirsty for.  
  
“Look,” Misha says gently over his shoulder. “I get that you don’t want to talk about this, I really do, man. But it’s--messing you up, Jensen. You can’t concentrate for shit; you're distracted.” A pause. “You're shut-off, and it’s not like you. It's scaring me.”  
  
Jensen twists his mouth. “Yeah, well,” he mutters. He stares at the glass in his hands for a moment, then twists sharply to Misha. “It’s just--don’t you feel like something’s--“ he fumbles with his fingers in the air, searching for words, and breaks off with a frustrated noise when he can’t find them. “Missing?” he asks finally, even though it doesn’t encompass by any stretch the feeling inside him.  
  
Misha squints in concentration. “No,” he says after a minute of careful thought. He wrinkles his nose. “At least, not before you said anything. Now you mention it, I do kind of feel like I lost my car keys, or something, which is really weird, but . . .”  
  
He shakes his head and meets Jensen’s eyes with his own grave blue ones. “That’s not making me liable to saw through a table with distraction. You, on the other hand, I’m not too sure about."  
  
Jensen sags against the counter, feeling tired right down to his bones. “I’m not gonna saw through the table,” he says, but frankly, he’s not too sure of it either. He’s never felt this unbalanced before.  
  
“Yeah? You sure about that?” Misha asks, as if reading his mind. “’Cause I’m not. Jensen, I’m--“ his face falls apologetically. “I want you to take your sick days.”  
  
“What?” Jensen demands, whipping his head up to glare at Misha. “No! That’s ridiculous.”  
  
“Is it?” Misha tosses back. He purses his lips and his eyes burn into Jensen’s, unrelenting. “You’re distracted, and it’s dangerous. For both of us. Jensen, come on, you _know_ this.” His face shifts, softens. “And I’m worried about you, asshole. Please, Jensen. A week. If you won’t do it for me as your friend, do it for me as your business partner."  
  
Jensen presses his lips together tightly and tries to calm the anger boiling in his stomach. He knows it's dangerous when you're distracted, yeah. Carpentry's really not one of those jobs you can space out in the middle of, not without losing limbs or at least a lot of blood. And if he's really being honest with himself, he knows Misha's right: he won't be able to keep his mind on his work today. But he knows himself, too, and knows that this feeling's not going to go away. It'll gnaw at him all day, bite at his mind until it's too much to bear, and if he has a job to concentrate on, maybe--  
  
"Jensen. _Please."_  
  
Jensen closes his eyes. "Fine," he gets out. He sets the water glass very carefully in the sink, forces his eyes open, and picks his way through stacks of wood till he gets to his desk, and his bag. Mechanically, he swings it over his shoulder.  
  
"Call me tonight," Misha orders from behind him. "Please."  
  
Jensen holds in a sigh, and nods. He can't quite meet Misha's eyes, but he knows what he'd find, if he could. "Sorry," he mumbles.  
  
"Get some rest," says Misha, equally soft.  
  
Jensen half-nods and then he can't stand it anymore. He hurries out of the shop and over to his bike without stopping.  
  
Outside, it's a little cooler. A breeze ruffles his hair, and if he inhales deeply, he can almost smell the sea salt in it. The sky is a loud, clear blue, comforting and familiar with its lack of clouds, and he feels himself calm a little at the sight of it. He bikes home and wonders if maybe, possibly, Misha's right in that he's a little overworked. Maybe he's just making a big deal out of nothing; castles out of clouds. Maybe the damn tower really doesn't mean anything.  
  
The thought makes him uneasy, weirdly. He firmly resolves to spend the rest of the day relaxing with the TV to take his mind off--whatever this is.  
  
His plan's derailed, though, when he clambers up the stairs and into his place, because right away, the same feeling of alarm and loss from earlier goes jangling through him. He flinches at the intensity of it, then fiercely chases after it, trying to figure out the trigger.  
  
The answer comes to him immediately: his apartment is too quiet.  
  
Jensen frowns and scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. Everything looks the same as it always does--his unmade bed, the lazy trails of books on the ground, the careful nests of scribbled-on paper sitting on his desk. He can see the usual host of unwashed dishes in the kitchen, which he never seems to get around to doing; the fridge is mostly empty, like it is every Thursday, because that’s shopping day. The blinds are open, slicing light over it all, and his laptop’s humming in the corner by the chess set he’s almost finished carving.  
  
Everything is where it should be, and yet something feels off. Like--like someone’s scraped something carefully out of the apartment and there’s an empty space, _somewhere_.  
  
Jensen hurls his keys on his bed and grinds his palms into his eye sockets. Things he didn’t say back at the shop snake up into his brain in whispers: _You're crazy._ _You're going crazy, and Misha's gonna have to take you to the asylum. You're crazy, you're crazy, you're--_  
  
_Shut the fuck up_ , he thinks back fiercely. _I'm not.  
  
_ He's not crazy. It itches in him--this certainty that there’s something he should _know_ that he doesn’t. He keeps almost remembering something, some snatch of feeling, but it teases in and out of the edges of his mind like a fish in the shallows of a river, and he can’t catch it.  
  
But he's not crazy. It's _there._ Too real to be all in his mind. His heart thrums nervously in his chest.  
  
"I'm _not_ crazy," he repeats to no one. The room offers no reply.  
  
He carefully packs the panic down inside him and turns slowly back to the door. He can't stay here; whatever it is, it feels too heavy in here. He’ll go back out and ride down to the beach, he decides. That always helps.  
  
The wind whips thoughts away until it’s just him, smoothing over the pavement like water with nothing to tie him down.  


 

  


  
She rises from the grass at twilight.  
  
Jensen’s sitting on the beach and watching the sun set, wavery yellow over the curls of gray clouds. He’d forgotten how early the chill sets in at this beach, though; he can feel the wind setting goosebumps on his skin, and he’s just thinking it might be time to start heading back to his cold, empty place when a woman crests the hill nearby.  
  
She comes over the curve of the sand like a hunting dog, eyes searching the sand meticulously. Jensen watches her for a moment, wondering if she's one of those treasure hunters. She doesn't much look like one. She's got no metal detector, and she's wearing one of those flimsy little white sundresses that seem to be popular right now, which wouldn't be practical for digging in the sand, he thinks. No shovel or bag, either. She’s got the focus for it, though: she's tiny, with thin wrists as fragile as bird bones and shoulders he could cup easily in his hands, but she radiates a strange, electric intensity that makes her seem twice as big. She has dark brown hair in long waves down her back, and a very Roman face: sharp nose and large, dark eyes.  
  
Those same dark eyes suddenly tip off the smooth sand and settle on him, and something flashes through her at once. She gives him a wide, pleased smile, and he smiles reflexively back at her and glances away at the grass waving in the breeze, cheeks hot with confusion. There's something almost familiar about her. He’s _sure_ he hasn’t met her before, though--he’d remember someone with this kind of presence.  
  
_Wouldn’t I?_ he wonders, cold thought seeping down to congeal in his throat.  
  
“Are you Jensen?” she calls suddenly, interrupting that thought before it can get a real hold anywhere else. He whips his head up, frowning. She trots over to him and stops, bare feet sinking a little into the sand, and blinks down at him.  
  
“Um, yeah. I mean, yeah, I’m Jensen. Hi,” he says, unsure, and offers her as much of a smile as he can find.  
  
“Hi! I have a question for you,” she says. All the energy in her is now focused on him, burrowing under his skin in a way that sets off the goosebumps again.  
  
“Uh, okay,” he says, squinting up at the silhouette of her face. “Um, sorry, but do I know you?"  
  
“No. My name is Genevieve,” she says, tilting her head and looking at him with a little smile.  
  
There’s something wide and wild in it--like a whole entire ocean’s been compressed and twisted into her eyes, all the ancient dust of beaten shells and whitecaps and salty air rolling over the hills in just that one look, roving over him. Jensen feels his heart beat light and quick in his chest. His palms are sweating. There’s a test in her. He can feel it; there’s a right or wrong, here, somehow, a choice he doesn’t know how to see--  
  
He shakes his head, shakes off the thoughts, too, and looks up at her. He forces on his polite smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Genevieve,” he says.  
  
She nods once, and glances at the ground next to him. “May I sit?” she asks brightly.  
  
“Uh, sure.”  
  
She folds her legs under her in one smooth, graceful motion, and clasps her hands quietly in her lap. “So will you hear my question?” she asks, fixing her eyes on his.  
  
He shrugs. “Why not. Go ahead.” He's not quite sure what her deal is, but it never hurts to listen.  
  
“Jared sent me to ask if you will come help him,” she says, leaning forward and holding his eyes like his answer matters more than anything in the whole entire world.  
  
He blinks and reels back a little at the intensity of her gaze. “Uh, I’m sorry--who’s Jared?" he says.  
  
He would remember if he knew this guy, he thinks. The way she says it, he’s not someone you forget.  
  
Her eyes dim and her shoulders fall. He swallows a nervous breath. She doesn’t say anything more for a long moment, then suddenly sighs and curls fluidly in on herself, looking out at the sea.  
  
“He was afraid you would not remember,” she says, mostly to herself.  
  
“What?” he asks, heart racing.  
  
She hums low in her throat and turns back to him. “He was afraid you would not remember. Jared," she tells him, "is the man you love, more than anything. Your partner in everything." Her voice is soft and liquid, pooling in the corners of his bones. "He's been taken and trapped by those who would harm him. And he asks you to help him."  
  
He sits there and stares at her and wants desperately to rewind, because he’s clearly missed something.  
  
She keeps speaking. “He said to tell you, if you couldn’t remember, to go to your apartment and to find--“ she pauses, tilts her head to remember, and says, “a big black binder, with a lot of pink paper sticking out of it, and to find the paper that has ‘rescue’ written on it. And to read that page, and to do what it says on the inside. To get Sandy.”  
  
He stares at her and shakes his head blankly. “Okay, um," he exhales, "I don’t know what the hell your deal is, but I don’t--I don’t even _have_ any big black binders, and I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says. "I think you have the wrong person."  
  
She furrows her mouth. “You're Jensen; you're the right person," she says, and shakes her snaking curls. "You only don’t remember Jared because someone stole your memories and hid every bit of him from you,” she says in a perfectly reasonable tone of voice.  
  
"Stole my memories," he repeats.  
  
“Yes. Haven’t you felt anything these past few days, something out of place?” she asks anxiously.  
  
He opens his mouth to tell her to get the hell out of here, because this has gone way too far, but his mind is racing in the background; _how does she know that? Is she lying, is she fishing for something?_ and that’s what comes out instead: “How do you know that?"  
  
She turns those bright eyes back on him. “Good, you held on to that much," she says. "You feel that because they no one can take memories entirely; they can take a piece of you, but you'll always get echoes.”  
  
He shakes his head, numb, disbelieving. “How the hell is--how the hell can someone do that? What you’re suggesting, it’s crazy. You can’t just _remove_ memories from someone. I’d have, like--" his brain works frantically, “lobotomy scars or something, wouldn’t I? They can’t do that. They can’t remove something so specific.”  
  
“No, no,” she says patiently, trailing her hand back and forth through the sand restlessly, though she must be doing it lightly, because it’s leaving no impression. “They haven’t cut it out of you _physically._ They’ve pulled the memories somewhere else, picked them from your brain and stored them somewhere. And of course it’s possible; magic is ingenious.”  
  
He blinks, stares. “Excuse me. Did you say _magic_?”  
  
She nods.  
  
He laughs shakily, and moves to stand, adrenaline making him wobble. “Okay, that’s it. I’m sorry--Genevieve, right--look, I’m sorry, but this? This is all crazy. There’s no such thing as magic.” The words alone sound fucking insane, breaking the peace cradled in the little dune they’ve been talking in. “I don’t know anyone named Jared, and I’m pretty sure I never have.”  
  
It’s almost dark out, by now. The sun dipped below the horizon long ago, and there’s a line of paler blue sky lingering at the edge of the ocean, but it’s mostly so dark a blue it’s almost black. The stars are starting to pick their way out in the darkness. The world looks quiet. Simple, he thinks. A place where stuff like this can’t exist.  
  
She's pale as a ghost in her white dress. She stands, holds a hand out just a little, and he backs up, stumbling over a clump of grass.  
  
“Magic is real,” she says. “Put out your hand.”  
  
He eyes her. She’s small--he could take her if she grabbed him. But why should he even risk it? She's clearly crazy--  
  
The niggling feeling of _something’s not right_ pushes at him, and for a moment, he wonders. What if, he thinks, somehow, she isn’t lying? Just what if she’s telling him the truth? What if this _is_ what's been tangling through him these past few days?  
  
He presses his lips tightly together and shoves out a hand before he can convince himself not to.  
  
She moves her own arm liquidly out, and presses her hand to his. Only when she presses, it goes right through him, sliding through his flesh like water. He doesn’t even feel a warning in his skin. He stares, pale and wide-eyed.  
  
_“What the fuck_ ,” he rasps, “I’m going crazy.”  
  
“You aren’t,” she counters, steady as granite. “I’ve _told_ you. Magic is real. I’m not of your plane, so you can't touch me,” she explains.  
  
“Jesus Christ,” he whispers, “Jesus _fucking_ Christ, what the hell. What the goddamn hell.”  
  
Jensen doesn’t believe in fairytales. He loves them--a fact which he keeps to himself, mostly--but he’s never gone, _I wonder if magic's real_ _?_ And yet here, staring him right in the face, is something which should be completely impossible. He jams his hand through her arm again. Nothing.  
  
So. Apparently magic _is_ real. The thought sticks in his chest, so heavy he can barely breathe, only stare at her.  
  
She watches him back, breathing along with the rhythm of the sea, and pulls him out of his own harsh breaths. “He needs your help,” she reminds him.  
  
“With-- _what?”_ he demands.  
  
She repeats her instructions about the binder and the post-its, and he shakes his head, panic whirling in him.  
  
“You don’t understand,” he protests lowly, words tumbling out. “I’m a fucking _carpenter_. I don’t--I’m not magic. I don’t know anything about this. I’m just, I just. I just make things.” He spreads his hands helplessly.  
  
She doesn’t waver. “Jared wants you,” she says. “He didn't tell me to find another magician. He told me to find you. Jensen Ross Ackles,” she adds carefully, like she’s put each syllable into a little memory box in her head, not to be forgotten.  
  
He laughs a little hysterically. “And I'll say again, what the hell can _I_ do for him?”  
  
“Jared wants you,” she repeats, shaking her head stubbornly. “You can rescue him.”  
  
“I don’t even _know_ \--or if I _do_ know him, I don’t fuckin’ remember him! And from the way you’re talking about this, could be really dangerous,” he argues, mouth moving before he thinks in his shock.  
  
She tilts her chin back and looks at him. Moonlight makes her face a study of shadows and angles, and he can feel the cold disapproval in every line of her. “If you would truly let the life of the one you love hang in the balance, then delay all you like,” she says.  
  
He drags his fingers down his face, shakes his head. It’s all too fucking fast. “That’s not what I meant,” he mumbles. “I just--look, can I sleep on it? I want to help the guy, I swear I do, but I have no idea how to do it, and I’m pretty sure he’ll want someone competent, and just--you can’t expect me to drop every fucking thing in my life just like that!”  
  
She shrugs, and from the delicate way it’s executed he’s sure she learned it from someone else, because it fits around her like a foreign language with an accent. “If that’s how you will it to be," she says icily. "I’ve told you all I came to tell you. I’ll return to you tomorrow night, wherever you are, so we can speak again.”  
  
He nods, peering at her, mind awhirl and stomach churning. “Look, I’m sorry--and thank you. I swear to God I’ll think about it,” he says.  
  
She just fades into the darkness, and he’s left alone, freezing on the dark beach like it never happened. The memory of her dark, angry eyes hangs in the air, and he shivers. If she was a test, he's pretty sure he failed.  
  
He stumbles the few blocks back home with his bike, and manages to get inside, thinking furiously.  
  
It’s--it’s fucking crazy, is what it is. There’s no way-- _should_ be no way--it can be true--but his mind settles again on his hand going right through Genevieve, and the feeling that he’s had for the last few days, of something gone wrong, pulled out of him.  
  
_What if it’s not crazy?_ he thinks again.  
  
His stomach curls in on itself. It’s crazy. It has to be. He's overworked, he's dreaming, this _isn't real._ Because otherwise he’s fucking forgotten someone he loves, and magic is real, and that person is trapped--  
  
A half angry, half insane thought comes to him: just look for the stupid binder. He _knows_ he doesn’t have any--can't abide how his fingers always get snapped in the rings--and that’ll be the end of wondering all this crap.  
  
He goes to the desk, thinking he’ll go through the drawers and look for it before moving on to the bookcase--funny, that bookcase is a lot bigger than he remembered it being, somehow--but then he sees that under a pile of paper he was looking at not four hours ago, there’s a black corner sticking out. Shaking, he shoves the paper away, and yeah. Wow. Somehow, right where he was looking before, there’s a big black binder that has one of Jensen’s printed labels on it: Jared’s Everything Binder.  
  
He sinks into the chair, staring in disbelief.  
  
After a moment, he pulls himself out of the shock. He claws the binder closer. Pink post-it’s stick out of every edge like spines, and he runs a finger down them and tries blankly to remember what Genevieve said. Find the one called “Rescue”--he rifles through them, shaking his head at the horrible handwriting, and God isn’t that just one more piece of proof? He writes neatly and this person writes like a second grader--finally, he finds it, and gingerly traces the page open.  
  
“SANDY RESCUE” is written at the top in the same crappy handwriting, along with a lot of notes, a couple of photocopied pieces of paper, and more post-its, green this time, stuck to the page. A post-it proclaims the photocopies to be “ORIGINAL PATTERN,” and Jensen decides to read them first. Mainly because those scribbly Gs are really confusing, and Times New Roman won’t be so difficult to get through.  
  
“ORIGINAL PATTERN” ends up being a story about a girl who gets stolen from her fiancée by a peacock, the King of Birds, and Jensen--Jensen has no fucking clue to do with that. He shakes his head again, staring at the paper. He thinks back to Genevieve’s words again; _find the one that says “Rescue” and do it._ But what the _fuck_ does that mean? How is he supposed to rescue anyone with a story?  
  
He peers at the huge collection of post-it’s again and picks the one at the top. _Trapped her inside the palace somehow,_ it reads. _Why after all this time?_ Another has just a bunch of completely illegible characters on it, and a third says _Peacock King defeated in conquest; what to bargain? Prediction? Ability?_  
  
Jensen blinks, and it all blurs in his mind. This is--this is too fucking much. He doesn't know what this is, or how to do this, or--  
  
He’s gonna go to bed, _and,_ he tells himself firmly, when he wakes up this shit won’t be here. Tomorrow he’s got another day off, so he’ll just relax, watch some TV, not think about any of this stupid mess. He nods, closes the binder decidedly, and heads off, carefully not thinking of anything beyond sleep.  


  
He dreams of the tower again. When he wakes up, the binder’s still on the desk.  
  
He takes his coffee and goes to sit by it wearily. He’s not really surprised, somehow. Telling yourself things like “it won’t be there in the morning” never works, which he should have learned by now.  
  
But Jensen finds that morning's at least reduced the panic to a level where he can push it down under a weird level of calm and focus. He purses his lips and goes through the facts. The binder’s still here--which means this whole thing is actually happening. There’s actually a girl, trapped or kidnapped somehow. Inside some . . . palace of the birds? And Jared, this Jared, this guy he supposedly loves, was going to rescue her, but now he’s stuck somewhere and can’t. And wants Jensen to do it, and then _find_ him somehow.  
  
Jensen leans back and squeezes his eyes shut. Talk about impossible fucking tasks. But no one else knows about this; this girl could be hurt, or dying, and it’s in Jensen’s power to try and stop it, so--his heart turns over in his chest and he takes a long, deep breath.  
  
What he was uncertain about last night is clear in the morning sunlight. It's in his power to try and help, so he’s gonna have to try.  
  
He pulls on his sturdiest jeans and best hiking boots, packs his backpack for a few days away--who knows how long this could take--and pulls on his windbreaker. _Great outfit for the intrepid hero,_ he thinks, snorting. _Okay, peacock king,_ he tells himself, forcing himself to be calm. _Where would you find the palace of a peacock king?  
  
_

  
It's crowded at the zoo, full of screaming kids and harried parents, but Jensen can't think of anywhere else there might be peacocks around here, so he ignores it as best he can, stepping around abandoned ice cream cones and tantrums. It’s a small zoo, but they have a pretty extensive avian habitat, one big caged enclosure that goes high enough that that some of them can really fly. He heads over to it and takes it all in, leaning against the railing. Sparrows, cranes, herons, ostriches--peacocks, one big male with a harem of little brown peahens in the corner. He spreads his tail for tourists watching, and it glitters in the sunlight.  
  
Jensen eyes him preening and thinks helplessly, _There’s no way that’s a king who’s got a girl trapped. There’s just no way._  
  
Even if he was, how the fuck would he even get in the cage? He takes a seat across from it, takes out his sketchbook and pretends to draw, while observing the whole enclosure. There’s no way in except that door at the back that connects to the inner tunnels of the zoo. And he couldn’t get in there unless he fucking _broke into the zoo_ , which, okay, maybe he’s crazy enough for even coming here and thinking about it, but there’s definitely no way he’s crazy enough to actually do it.  
  
He stops and makes himself think the next step through logically. When you put a box together, to have to match up all the edges and nail it together perfectly, and if you don’t have all the measurements right beforehand, you’ll end up with an ugly mess. So, that’s what this has to be. A _plan_.  
  
Okay. First, he doesn’t have any clue to figure out how Sandy’s really being held here, so he needs Genevieve’s help. That means he’s gonna have to wait until it gets dark--which means he can’t try and rescue Sandy until tomorrow night. So he doesn’t really need to be here until he can get more information, he thinks. Dammit, he hopes the girl’s all right. If Genevieve can only come at night, it might take them a couple days to figure everything out--but suddenly, he remembers something. He shoves off the bench and heads to the nearest information booth.  
  
The Night Tour is a scheme the zoo came up with a few years ago, to allow people to see the nocturnal animals by letting a certain amount of people in if they pay extra. If he goes on the Night Tour, he can get Genevieve to help him figure out how _tonight_ to get Sandy out of here, and then they can move on to Jared, all in one fell swoop.  
  
He just hopes they still have tickets.  


  
Five o’clock finds him shoved in a string of go-carts painted like zebras with a bunch of other people, fidgeting and listening to a speech about bats. He glances up at the sky again. The sun’s just setting, so Genevieve’ll probably show up sometime soon. He hopes.  
  
He glances at the schedule; looks like nocturnal birds are second on the list, so he’ll be able to leave to go to the “bathroom” and wait for Genevieve in about fifteen minutes. He planned this out earlier--the big aviary’s not too far from the nocturnal birds area, and the bathroom’s in between them, so it’s pretty plausible for him to head in that direction, he thinks, and prays that no one wants to pay attention to the scruffy guy in the Zoo baseball hat when he sneaks off.  
  
To his surprise, it goes off without a hitch. He makes a vague motion at one of the dads near him when they get off the go-carts--he picks one of the ones who’s actually having a good time, so he’ll be distracted. Then he walks purposefully towards the bathroom and just keeps going. He doesn’t see a guard, but if he does, it’s easy enough to say he left his map in the carts and got lost looking to meet up with them again, he figures.  
  
His heart is pounding in his chest and he’s more nervous than he’s ever been in his entire life. This is not a good idea--he could get in so much trouble-- but he doesn’t have many options here, does he?  
  
As he’s thinking that and coming up to the bench outside the aviary, a white shape appears beside him.  
  
“Jensen,” Genevieve says out of the half-darkness.  
  
He stumbles, and slaps his hand down over his heart. “Jesus, you scared this shit out of me,” he breathes. “Uh, hi.”  
  
She looks around curiously, and when she sees the aviary, her face brightens, and when she looks at him, her eyes are gleaming. “You’ve decided to rescue Jared?”  
  
He sighs. “Yeah. Anyway, doesn’t look like I’ve got too much choice, does it? But I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here. I looked in Jared’s binder and there was this story about a girl trapped with birds, but I don’t know how the hell that could happen here. It’s just, I couldn’t think of anywhere else with birds. I need your help.”  
  
She smiles softly. “I’ll help you in any way I can, of course. Have you found the way in yet?” She glances around and her eyes catch on a space behind him. “There, look!--there’s a doorway someone’s set open.”  
  
He whips around and looks for the door, but sees nothing. There’s a padlock over the side door, just like there was two seconds ago. He scowls into darkness. “No, it's still locked.”  
  
"Not _that_ doorway," she says. She points over his shoulder. “See the glow from the hinge, and the symbol for the knob? By the clump of ferns.”  
  
Suddenly he’s staring at a set of glowing symbols, which are hanging in the air not ten feet away from him, gleaming a little like moonlight. He shakes his head in disbelief. It looks like something right out of a movie “How did I not see that before?” he whispers. “It’s glowing like a goddamn lightbulb.”  
  
“It’s hidden, unless you know the right away to look for it. You _do_ know the right way, but they’ve taken that memory, of course,” she says.  
  
“Of course,” he echoes, shaking his head. God, this whole damn thing is fucked up and crazy. _Don’t think about that!_ he chides himself. _Get to the girl._  
  
Okay, then.  
  
He swallows and moves toward the “doorway,” peering around the edge, and has to fight back a gasp when he realizes there’s an entirely different world inside--a hall full of people, laughing and drinking and dancing in a pale golden light--stretched between the symbols.  
  
Jensen bites down hard on his lip and stares through into the other place, forcing himself to breathe slowly so his heart calms. Well. There goes every last, desperately lingering hope this wasn’t real, this whole magic deal. Which means he _has_ to find Sandy as soon as possible, because every minute she spends in that other world she’s in more danger. In the story, the Peacock King went through a whole slew of wives before he settled on one, beheading the girls who didn’t please him. Jensen can just bet that whoever trapped Sandy there would _love_ that.  
  
“All right, here goes nothing,” he whispers, and forces himself to slide through. Heat prickles over his skin for a second, and then he’s standing in the edge of the other world.


	2. Chapter 2

Everything glitters. He blinks and tries to catch his breath in the face of the sparkling haze, suddenly feeling impossibly small and shabby in the midst of all the people. They look like a perfect royal court taken from a picture book: the women are dressed in sumptuous gowns of rustling fabrics in every color imaginable, and the men wear old-fashioned shirts and breeches under long, brilliantly patterned capes that swirl as they move. Every face is hidden beneath an elaborately feathered and beautiful mask. Flamingo, starling, owl, parrot . . . it’s not until Jensen comes across a too-realistic crane mask that he gets what’s going on.   
  
They aren’t masks, and these aren’t people--they’re birds, transformed into something half-human in this weird reality. He can see it in the way they move, never stilling for a moment and letting their beady black eyes dart around. The bottom of his stomach drops out, but he swallows and looks away, at the rest of the place, trying to keep from losing his head.  
  
Everything is made of gold: stairs, floor, walls, curtains, all gleaming a buttery-soft yellow behind the colorful explosion of bird-people. A long golden table laid with gold plate occupies the back of the hall, and next to it sits a man playing an eerie tune on a golden harp, which the court is dancing along to. Even the throne is made of gold, crafted delicately in the shape of a huge peacock’s tail and studded with gemstones to color the feathers, which reach halfway to the ceiling. Crystal columns mirror the gold wherever he looks. And above everything, a chandelier glimmers dimly, casting shivering waves of light over the whole room and making it hard to tell what’s real and what’s just a trick of the half-darkness.  
  
By all rights, this hall should be the most beautiful thing Jensen’s ever seen. But something’s off about it, somehow. The bird-people are too perfect. Everyone’s laughing, light and airy little laughs that flitter over everything like bird chatter, and they’re worming their way under Jensen’s skin and making his gut churn. The harp aches in his ears, and he wants more than anything to leave. It makes him too nervous.  
  
He swallows. _Find the King, find Sandy_ , he reminds himself.  
  
He looks around again and instantly spots the Peacock King, towering over a flock of admirers. His mask is bright blue and green, and draped over his shoulders is a long cape made of peacock-feather print silk, adorned with rivers of little golden beads. On his forehead sits a golden circlet dripping with jewels, and his arms are drowning in gilt bracelets. One of the courtiers leans forward and twitters something into his ear, and he tosses his head back to let out a shrill laugh that echoes through the room and makes Jensen’s bones feel fragile as glass.  
  


  
He sets his teeth and ignores it. There’ll be time for worry later; right now he’s looking for a woman to match the King. He searches the entourage for a suitably dressed lady, and fixes his gaze on a promising one at his left, who’s probably an egret in reality. She _looks_ like a King’s bride: tall and captivating in a flowing white gown, and with an elaborate fishtail braid of blonde hair down her back. Jensen wishes desperately he knew or remembered what Sandy looked like, but this girl is probably his best bet. The king is allowing her to cling to his elbow, so she must have some kind of special privilege, right?  
  
He’s about to step forward to speak to them when he remembers the scene from the aviary earlier in a flash. The peacock, surrounded by the peahens--oh, that sick twisted bastard. Jensen eyes him. Yeah, the King looks _just_ like the type who’d have a harem. Anger simmers under his skin at the thought.  
  
He looks around a third time and spots the peahens hidden in the corner, all dressed in demure brown with simple masks. They’re chittering quietly to each other, looking completely content to be almost melting into the shadows, away from the excitement. There’s one, though, on the end--small, dark-haired girl--who keeps casting her eyes around the room restlessly, looking confused and a little delirious.  
  
 _That’s her_ , Jensen thinks.  
  
“Hey, Genevieve,” he murmurs. “Girls in the corner; how about that dark-haired one who looks out of it?”  
  
She looks and nods very slightly. “As good a bet as any,” she whispers back. “Will you speak to her? What shall I do?”  
  
He takes in the Peacock King again, smirking as a clumsy swallow walks by and laughing when she trips on her long train. “I think maybe you’d better wait,” he mutters, “unless it looks like I need help. 'Cause I don’t trust these--people. I definitely don’t trust the King. So keep an eye out and stay safe, okay? And let me know if you think of anything else I need to know. Was there anything else Jared told you, maybe?” he wonders.  
  
Her brow furrows. “There was one thing,” she says. “He said if you get into trouble, remember that circles protect you. If you need to keep danger out, draw a circle around yourself and you shall be protected.”  
  
Jensen frowns. He’s read that, somewhere, but God, he never thought it would actually work. “All right. I gotcha. Circles. Okay, I’m--wait here while I go try and get us out of this mess.”  
  
“I’ll come if you need help,” she promises solemnly.  
  
He nods once and forces himself to take a step into the center of the room. All eyes are on him instantly--he can feel them piercing through his practical jacket to his plain black t-shirt and well-worn jeans, and he can practically hear their lips curling into sneers. He stands straight and tilts his chin up, like he was taught, and strides confidently forward like it doesn’t bother him when really all he wants to do is turn and run.  
  
A titter of gossip follows the sound of his boots thunking on the ground, and the Peacock King hears about him before he gets here. He raises his crowned head and grins a wide, empty smile at Jensen as he approaches. His teeth glitter like the jewels around the room, and Jensen feels the hairs on his neck rise, but tries not to show it.  
  
“Welcome, Stranger!” cries the king when Jensen comes to a stop in front of him. He waves at Jensen with a tiny green glass and tosses an imperious glance at some underling fawning at his side. “Get this man a drink,” he commands.  
  
 _No_ , Jensen’s mind says immediately, flashing back to a thousand stories of poisoned food. “Thanks, but I’m not thirsty,” he mumbles.  
  
“No?” asks the king, tilting his head in a bird-like manner. “Something to eat? A dance? Lodging? Marriage to someone in my realm?” He grins wider, and waves a hand to encompass the room. “Everyone in my kingdom is happy, Stranger, and so must you be.”  
  
Jensen presses his lips together and forces himself not to shift on his feet or back down. His heart is racing and he can feel sweat dripping into the collar of his shirt. He’s terrified. But right now, that can’t matter, so he takes slow, deep breaths and makes himself look as calm as he can.  
  
“Actually,” he says, “I came because you have something that belongs to my world.” _Doesn’t sound strong enough,_ he thinks with a moment of panic, and hastily adds, “Something that belongs to _me._ ”  
  
A chain of horrified gasps echo around the chamber, and the king draws himself up to his full height, chest thrust out proudly. Jensen stares him straight in the eye and thinks, _Don’t you even_ try _to get out of this, you know what you did._  
  
“I am shocked,” says the king gravely, “that anyone would accuse me of theft."  
  
The crowd lets out a burst of applause, cheering and whistling and ruffling their clothing like feathers.  
  
 _You fucker_ , Jensen thinks, pressing his lips together in fury and watching the greedy gleam in the king’s eye. _Okay, fine. If you want to play that way, we’ll play that way._ His mind's whirling miles ahead of him, back to the story in Jared's binder and all the ones he's ever read.  
  
“Well,” he tosses out, “if you’re sure it’s yours, you won’t have a problem fighting for it, do you?”  
  
The king glowers and crosses his arms over his chest. “As if I would lower myself to the base level of peasant fighting!” he scoffs to his attendants. “Like two roosters forced into a ring, how _crass_.”  
  
“Not that kind of fight,” corrects Jensen. “Riddles.” He raises a challenging eyebrow.  
  
The king pauses, intrigued. He turns to stare sideways at Jensen with one piercing eye. “Riddles?” he asks.  
  
“Yeah. And the first one who can’t solve a riddle forfeits that girl,” Jensen says, pointing to the corner.  
  
The bird-people titter, and the king tosses his feathered head with a grin. “Pah! I’ll never lose to a human!” he crows. “I’ll agree to your contest, Stranger, as it may amuse me. Each gets ten riddles, though, no more,” he warns.  
  
“All right. Well, then, I guess we have a bargain,” Jensen says, stepping forward and holding out a hand. “Oh, and anything goes if the loser forfeits his promise. For penance, I mean.”  
  
The king laughs. “As you desire, but the defeated party shall be you. You may go first,” he tells Jensen, and scratches at his chin with a too-long fingernail. Jensen tries not to obviously shudder.  
  
He picked riddles because Misha has some obsession with them. He keeps telling them to Jensen--bad, good, and in between--so Jensen figures he’s got quite a collection amassed in his head. He’s just hoping he’ll remember the better ones. He thinks for a moment.  
  
“As I went across the bridge, I met a man with a load of wood which was neither straight nor crooked. What kind of wood was it?” he asks, a little hoarsely.  
  
The king makes a disgusted noise. “Easy! Sawdust.” His smile curls dangerously under his mask. “And your turn: what fastens two people yet touches only one?” he returns.  
  
“Wedding ring,” says Jensen, after a moment’s thought. He searches his memory for a suitable reply, and offers one about rainbows, but the King guesses it in a nanosecond.   
  
That’s how the rest of them go, too--they’re not easy riddles, but soon it becomes clear that they’re pretty evenly matched, and Jensen’s on his second-to-last riddle without even realizing it.  
  
He doesn’t fidget, because that would show how scared he is, and if he doesn’t watch himself he’ll be dead in a split second. But he’s panicking, skin awash with it. _He knows all these riddles,_ his brain thinks frantically, and he shuts the thought up with a _Well, then I’ve just got to think of one he_ doesn’t _know, right?_ He runs through the rest of them, but they’re all--he’s used all the hard ones now, he needs something the King won’t know.   
  
_I should have thought_ _of ahead_ , he thinks, swallowing while the King is tapping his jeweled fingers against his cloak lining and smiling and looking more like a vulture than a peacock.  
  
Suddenly a thought comes to Jensen: _make one up._ Make one up with something a Peacock King’s bound not to know. An Earth-riddle, and nothing too old--nothing from a fairytale, or or the King might guess.  
  
His brain skitters away from that, settles on something, and without stopping to think, he opens his mouth and says, “What, uh--what connects two people over thousands of miles and lets them talk to each other just by using their fingers, and no voices?”  
  
The King stares at him, and the court goes silent. The room waits for long, long minutes--even the harpist stops plucking, and Jensen can barely breathe, hoping to death the King doesn’t know about text messaging.   
  
Finally, the King’s mouth twists and shrivels under the edge of his mask. He growls and sweeps a plate from the nearby table with a loud crash. The court cowers, men drawing their cloaks up to hide their faces from him.  
  
“I must admit defeat,” the King yells, eyes blazing at Jensen. He sweeps his own cloak towards the door, radiating anger. “Now remove yourself from my palace, human, and perhaps I’ll spare your life!”  
  
Jensen goes cold all over, and his stomach knots. “No!” he hisses, “that’s not how it works. You made a promise and if you don’t _keep it_ this whole place is gonna crumble around you! So let me take the girl.”  
  
The razor-sharp grin comes back, and the King makes a hand motion. “Who said we had to keep our promises? I was even generous, and gave you a chance to escape; now, guards? _"_  
  
 _Oh fuck,_ Jensen thinks, panic sharp in his chest, _I should have made him swear on something, fuck, I should--_  
  
Genevieve’s behind his shoulder, suddenly. “Jensen,” she breathes, “circles!”  
  
He doesn’t hesitate for longer than a moment--leans back and curls his lip at the king like he’s thinking, then breaks into a run, grabbing a bowl of something jelly-like he saw a guest dip his bread in earlier. He hurtles into the corner, squawks following him. The peahens scatter with distressed little noises, except Sandy, who stares up at him in bewilderment. _Don’t have time,_ he thinks; wrenches her to his side, leans down and gets his fingers sticky from the jam, then draws a rough circle just as the guards are pounding up to them.  
  
The guards have spears--long, wickedly sharp spears. That’s the only thought that Jensen has time for before one’s drawing his arm back and--  
  
Coming up against some kind of barrier, at the edge of Jensen’s weak jam circle. Jensen and the guard both stare, openmouthed and disbelieving.  
  
The King shrieks in outrage, and the court yells and caws in angry assent. “You come into my palace and _disrespect me_ only to prevent my guards from taking proper action?” he screams. Jensen shivers. "You _dare_ , human?"  
  
He screeches again, gold eyes fiery with rage. The whole court screams after him, and it all winds into this huge punch of sound Jensen’s sure has got to be breaking his eardrums. It keeps going, louder and louder--  
  
"You broke a promise," Jensen yells back. "I don't owe you _anything!_ _"_  
  
At his words, the glass chandelier shatters and crashes to the ground in a shower of glass and light. A stunned silence spreads through the room.  
  
The silence doesn’t last. The chandelier must have been a key structural element, somehow, because the ceiling dips inwards and suddenly, shockingly, the whole palace is coming down in pieces. The crystal columns crack and crumble; the gold peels from the walls; the ceiling caves in, all amidst the screams of the court.   
  
Jensen pushes the girl to the ground and crouches over her, praying none the debris falls on them and just trying to outlast the palace. Miraculously, the circle seems to protect them from debris, too, and Jensen thanks God for Genevieve’s clear head. He closes his eyes and counts until he can’t hear any more noise.   
  
After a long while, the room is silent. Jensen breathes out a long shaky breath and looks up through the dust, feeling drained and pale.  
  
The palace is a ruin around them. There’s almost no hint of the eerie beauty from before; the bird-people have all fled, and the moon is shining over the large swath of destruction through the jungle-like trees around them.   
  
Jensen doesn’t waste time waiting for something else to come get them. “Come on, come on,” he mutters, dragging the girl up and out of the wreckage without looking back. Adrenaline’s pumping through his veins, and he doesn’t stop till he’s got them back at the entrance made with the symbols. He pushes her gently through and stumbles out himself, but keeps hold of the edge of it, because he’s not sure Genevieve’ll get out otherwise.  
  
The girl blinks and shakes her head, looking up at him with complete confusion. He can see the delirium from before fading, though, so he figures it’s just confusion at the whole guy-you-don’t-know-rescues you thing. He opens his mouth to explain, but she beats him to it.  
  
“Jensen?” breathes the girl--Sandy--eyes going wide. “Gods above and spirits below,” she says then, face turning bright and soft. She reaches out and pulls him in tight for a solid hug, warm body tucked into his chest like she belongs there.  
  
He hugs her back, gently, feeling more and more out of place every minute. “Do I know you?” he can’t help but ask, heart turning in his chest at the thought of one more important person he doesn’t remember.  
  
She leans back and looks up at him, fondness practically shining in her dark eyes. “No, we haven’t met yet. But we were going to, and God, I’m so glad you’re here.”   
  
That’s a relief, in a way. This not knowing anything, it’s like a burning in the back of his brain.  
  
She looks up behind him, grinning. “Where’s Jay?” she asks.  
  
Fuck.  
  
He rubs a hand over his eyes and wishes he could sleep forever. “So apparently,” he rasps, “there’s a spell. He’s--well, I don’t know where he is, but somewhere, he’s trapped, and I’m supposed to find him and uh, I can’t remember him.”  
  
Her eyes widen. “You can’t remember--“  
  
“Not a single goddamn thing.”  
  
Out here, the world seems too plain to encompass what just happened. It's a cool night, almost running to fog, and the stars aren't clear. The zoo is eerily quiet, which he guesses makes sense.  
  
He can see the remains of the palace running through some frantic timeline behind them, crumbling and wilting and losing the last hints of glimmer. Without the gilt, it looks like the cage it was.  
  
“Fuck,” Sandy says, sounding very small. She looks at him like she’s going to cry, then shakes her head and straightens. When she speaks again, her voice is methodical. “Did he--if you don’t remember anything, how do you know that?”  
  
Jensen tucks his hands into his pockets. “He sent someone to me, and she told me about all of this. Didn’t believe her at first, of course, but--“ he laughs, tries not to let it sound too hysterical-- “think I have to, now.”  
  
She hums, frowning. “Sent someone to you?”  
  
“Genevieve,” he says, motioning at the figure now emerging from the palace.  
  
Sandy's frown deepens, and she shakes her head. “How?--well, we’ll figure it out later.” She looks around at the decaying edges of the palace. Her shoulders tilt, and a frown, half-sadness, half-concentration, takes up on her face.  
  
“Beautiful piece of work, those goddamn bastards,” she says. The words seem a little odd coming out of her mouth, but she’s obviously not as docile as she looked in her peahen guise.  
  
Genevieve comes over to them then, through the barrier. “Sandy,” she says, face brightening. “Hello. My name is Genevieve.”  
  
“Hi, Genevieve.” Sandy smiles back, and glances up at Jensen. “I think you can let go of the edge now.”  
  
He does, and Sandy smoothes her fingers over one of the symbols. The window to the other world fades away till they’re left staring at the cyclone fence of the aviary. Jensen shakes his head and thinks, _Escape now, ask later._  
  
“Come on,” he whispers, “we’d better get the fuck out of here before someone finds us. We can say one of us got sick when we get to the front desk if anyone asks, but I’m sure they’ll let us out either way.” He leads them back to the main part of the zoo, keeping an eye out for anything else weird and detachedly wondering, through the adrenaline rush, how the hell he just pulled that off.  
  
Sandy seems to rally, once they’re traipsing down the path of the Night Tour, grins and squeezes his shoulder, then takes in the whole of him and smiles sunnily. “You and Jay must be beautiful together,” she says.  
  
“I wouldn’t know,” he mutters, and thinks he keeps the worst of it to himself, but God, her face softens just a little.  
  
He looks down, wishes he wasn’t so fucking transparent about how this all confuses him, and how he’s not even sure what going on.   
  
“Can’t remember even just one thing, can you?” she asks. "Can't remember meeting him or knowing him at all."  
  
“No,” he says, then hesitates. “Just--kind of remember something’s supposed to be there, you know?”  
  
He wouldn’t have told her, but she looks so--goddamn, she just feels trustworthy, whole and sweet.  
  
“Yeah,” she sighs. “That’s all the grief the spell’ll let through. Okay, listen, here’s what we’re gonna do. I can find him for you, if we go to my house, and then we’ll figure out how to rescue him.”  
  
“Really?” he says. “Oh, god, awesome. Because I have no fucking clue how to do any of this.” He swallows, strangles a laugh. “I mean, magic? People stealing memories; _kidnapping_ people? Not my normal Friday afternoon, lemme tell you. And why’d they go after Jared, anyway?”  
  
Shadows play along her unhappy face. “There's a war going on.”  
  
He frowns in confusion. “A war between _who?_ ” he demands.  
  
She glances at him, frowns. “Magicians.”  
  
He covers half of his face and wants to laugh again, but he’s afraid if he starts, it’ll turn into one of those scenes from a movie where the person can't stop. “Just to make sure, we’re talking about like, people who can use magic, not people who do card tricks and stuff,” he mumbles.  
  
“Magicians,” says Sandy softly, “like people who can use real magic. Like me and Jared.”  
  
He drops his hand and stares at her, mouth open. “ _What_?”  
  
She smiles softly. “Jared and I are magicians. We wouldn’t be targets at all if we weren’t.”  
  
He squeezes his eyes shut. “You know,” he says, groping for humor so he doesn’t fall apart, “this just keeps getting more and more crazy. I’d’ve expected it to taper off after a while.”  
  
She sighs and takes his arm. They’re at the entrance to the zoo, so they’re silent for a few minutes, smiling weakly at the gate guard and heading towards the parking lot while Genevieve trails behind them.  
  
“What’s the war about?” he asks quietly when they’ve come to a stop by his bike.  
  
She shrugs hopelessly and looks up at the moon, which is almost too bright a white to bear looking at. "It started off with a horrible, stupid blood feud. Like most wars do, over something small." She pauses. "We have rules, you know, of how we can use magic, and a set of people to make sure they're kept. Like policemen, I guess. About ten years ago, someone broke a rule--in a really horrible way, too," she adds, mouth tightening. "It was awful, from what I know. So one of the Rulekeepers went to stop him, and it just happened that the Rulekeeper and the Rulebreaker were from different feuding families. And the Rulekeeper was killed. The families declared war, the Rulekeepers moved in to try to stop it--and then it became an argument about the way we're governed, and a lot of magicians were killed--" she turns her face to the ground, anger tightening her features. "And it was _useless_ and meaningless, like wars almost always are. And now it's started up again."  
  
He bites his lip. "Okay. And why you and Jared, specifically?" he asks hesitantly.  
  
She grimaces. "Partly because we're--"she breaks off and shrugs. "Well, we're good, not to brag. We're good at what we do. Taking us out of commission would be worth a lot, to some people. And partly because our families were involved in solving the dispute." She worries her lip between her teeth. "I'm sorry you got dragged into it."  
  
He scrubs a tired hand over his face and doesn’t say anything, because he can’t _think_ anything, not anything past _this is all fucked up_ , anyway.  
  
“You know,” she says gently, “you don’t have to do this. I can do it alone. No one’ll think any less of you, now.”  
  
He shakes his head slowly and brings his head up to look her in the eye. “I’ve already come this damn far. And he asked for me, and if he’s--“ he blows out a breath. “Well, Genevieve said something about him being--the one I love. And if he is, then I wanna help him in any way I can.”  
  
She smiles up at him warmly. “I was hoping you’d say that,” she admits. “And you do love him. And he loves you, too, more than anything.”  
  
“Yeah,” he laughs humorlessly. “just wish I could remember anything about him.”  
  
“Yeah,” she says, “well, let’s see what we can do about this all. First we’re gonna head over to my place so I can figure out where he is, and then we’ll go get him. And maybe, in the meantime,” she murmurs, turning to Genevieve. “Genevieve, can you get back to Jared if you need to?”  
  
Genevieve nods. “It’s the being away that taxes him, not the keeping me close.”  
  
Sandy nods and frowns. “That’s what I thought. Could you ask him to do something for me, maybe, and come back with his answer?”  
  
Genevieve nods again, and Sandy draws her close so she can whisper something into her ear. “All right,” says Genevieve. “I’ll return with an answer.” She disappears with no more notice.  
  
“Don’t think I’m ever gonna get used to that,” mutters Jensen, leaning down to unlock his bike. “What is she, anyway?"  
  
"Not human," says Sandy. "Other than that, I'm not sure yet, but I'll find out. My place is three-one-five Panston Court, by the way,” she says, naming a place not too far away, in one of the better parts of town.  
  
“All right then. Think you’ll be okay on the handlebars?” he asks, mounting his bike.  
  
She hops carefully up, gripping the sides near his hands. “Ready. Let’s go.”

  


  
The inside of her house looks like a mad scientist’s laboratory.   
  
Jensen pulls off his helmet and peers around cautiously as she bustles in through the doorway and leads him into a spacious kitchen. There are a lot of boxes sitting around the foyer, and the rest of the house seems a little empty--he wonders if she's just moved--but the kitchen is in perfect order. An army of clear jars is lined up along one entire wall, each with some unidentifiable and colorful powder or liquid in them. A neat little library ladder rests beside the wall, presumably so she can reach the higher jars. Her countertops are clean enough to eat off of, and her pans gleam like stars.  
  
She motions him to sit at the table and pulls a few of them down, setting them along the counter. Next she takes a Bunsen burner from a cupboard filled with clean test tubes, and plugs it in the outlet next to the jars.  
  
“Shouldn’t take long,” she mutters, opening one jar and tipping some of the liquid in it into the Bunsen burner. He nods quietly, and tries to read some of the labels on the jars, almost expecting to see things like “eye of newt” written in spidery handwriting. It’s mostly printed labels, though, like his own, all in Latin, which he can't read. He wonders how she learned all this--how his mysterious lover learned all this, how to find people who’re hidden and open doors into other worlds.  
  
Sandy interrupts his train of thought when she starts tapping at the side of the beaker she’s got going on the fire. She peers in at the liquid and pours it out in a clear glass dish while he watches. “Huh,” she says, frowning. “That’s--weird.”  
  
“What?” he can’t help but ask.  
  
“I don’t--huh. Riddles aren’t my specialty, you see, so, I’m not really--it’s not really giving me a clear direction. It says something like ‘between east sun west moon,’ but that doesn’t make any sense. Does it mean in the middle of the night, after moonset and before sunrise?” she mutters. She shakes her head, peering at the sparkling liquid again. “I think we’re going to need help on this. Let me just write this down.”  
  
“Where are we going to get help on something like this?” he asks.  
  
“We’re going to see Danneel, my friend,” she says. "We would've gone there next anyway--she and Jared and I are really close, and she'd kill me if we rescued him without her--but this just makes it more necessary." She caps her pen and turns to him. “Each of us kind of have one or two magic specialties, you know? Mine are--well the first one is complicated, but the second one's Alchemy, obviously,” she adds, motioning around at the lab-like kitchen. “The art of changing one thing into another using elements. It's like Chemisty and Physics shoved into one, with magic. Jared's first specialty is Symbolry, which uses written or drawn symbols to make things happen, that whole 'naming something changes it' principle--that’s how he opened the aviary into the fairytale. His other one is Storytelling, which means he reads and keeps and tells tales, changing the world around us with them. That’s Danny’s specialty, too. That and Directionality, which is finding or hiding things with maps and compasses and a very clear sense of direction.” She sighs and brushes her pants off. “Which is why we need her. She'll help us find what this means, where Jay is.”  
  
Jensen shakes his head a little, still trying to take in the explanation, and wishing even just one bit of this was easy. “Okay,” is what he says aloud. “Where’s she live?”  
  
“A few long hours away,” Sandy says. “We’re going to have to drive.”  
  
“Uh, I didn’t see a car parked out there,” Jensen says.  
  
“No, we’re going to use Jared’s car.” Her mouth quirks in a humorless smile. “He’s not using it right now, obviously. It should be outside your place.”  
  
He sighs. “All right, then. It’s about a twenty-minute ride from here. Do you want to wait till morning?”  
  
“No,” she says. “We have to get out of here as soon as possible. Just let me get ready, and then we can go.”  
  
She disappears into a little room at the back and comes out dressed pretty similarly to him: heavy jacket, backpack, sturdy clothing. It's all a little different, though; he can see some unrecognizable symbols on the clasps of her purple jacket, and she has a strange kind of bandolier around her chest with tiny glass bottles set into it, cushioned by leather padding. He can just catch glimpses of brightly colored powders and liquids inside them, and wonders if it’s more of the stuff she was fiddling with earlier. She sees him looking and tips him a lopsided grin. “Can’t rush into battle without my weapons, can I?” she asks, patting the bandolier and glancing down at a knife she's strapped around her leg.  
  
He smiles back at her, feeling something in him settle into calm. He’s lucky, he thinks, that he got Sandy, and not a fairytale damsel in distress; she’s level-headed and determined, and unafraid to fight. He couldn’t have done this alone.   
  
He sends up a prayer of thanks to whoever’s listening and grabs his stuff. At the threshold, Sandy pauses to draw a line of something red across her doorstep and bolt the three locks with her keys, and then they’re off again, riding through the empty streets back to his place.


	3. Chapter 3

"Over there,” she says when they’re about ten feet away from the door to Jensen’s apartment, pointing at a car gleaming black under a streetlight. He takes in the car and whistles low, because goddamn if it’s not a glorious thing, well-kept with beautiful lines.

Sandy jumps off the bike as he rolls to a stop, and he makes sure the lock it up carefully, because if this goes right, he probably won’t be able to come get it for a couple days.

They go to the car, and Sandy pets the hood a little. “This is his baby,” she says. “The Impala. I’ve been told he lets you drive it without even a token protest, which is pretty much the highest compliment anyone ever gets from him--“ she breaks off midsentence to yawn, and he notices with a jolt that she looks fucking exhausted. The chivalrous part of his brain starts beating him up immediately.

“Hey,” he says, “you’re tired. Let me drive for a while.”

She shakes her head. “No, no, I’ll be fine. Just a little worn out from that stupid ball--now that I’m out of there, I think it was going on for several nights. Little power drain set on it, I think; they probably wanted me unable to fight it. But seriously, I’ll be fine in a little while. I couldn’t let you drive.”

“You can,” he says firmly. “Look, I’ll wake you up when I get tired, but let me drive for a while. Wouldn’t want to fall asleep at the wheel, would you?”

She sighs exasperatedly. “You know what, you and Jared need to stop this whole chivalry thing--“ she yawns again, and looks sheepish. He quirks an eyebrow at her and she scrunches her nose adorably. “Fine, shut up,” she mutters, fishing the keys out of her pocket. “Here. She lives in Three Trees; wake me up at _any time_ and I’ll start driving, okay? Can’t have either one of us at anything less than our best.”

“You betcha,” he says, taking the cold keys from her. They feel right, almost familiar, in his palm, and he startles a little, then shakes it off. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

She crawls into the passenger side and he gets behind the wheel. She’s asleep within minutes, and he settles back for a long drive.

 

  


When they’ve been driving for about six hours, Jensen pulls them over into a rest stop, because he needs to take his eyes off the road for a little while. He hasn’t had the heart to wake Sandy, who’s curled in the passenger seat. She looks so much smaller in her sleep, and when he thinks of what could have happened to her in that savage king’s palace, he’s fiercely glad he managed to pluck up the courage to go get her. He parks the car and locks the doors, leaving her asleep, and walks out of the parking lot to stretch his legs.

The rest stop has some firepits and picnic tables, and it’s cold enough that Jensen decides to light a fire in one of the firepits just for the hell of it. He’s pretty good at starting fires, because he was an Eagle Scout when he was a kid, and he’s got one going in five minutes. It does him good to have something concrete to do. Something easy to concentrate on in the heart of all this insanity. He stretches out on one of the picnic tables when he’s got it flickering up between the grill plates and whittles for a while, fashioning a little whistle out of a chunk of pine he found on the ground. Strange, how a thing so simple can ground him, but he finds himself calming under the warm welcoming feel of the wood.

After a little bit, Sandy stumbles blearily out of the car and comes over to join him. “Thanks for letting me sleep,” she rasps.

“Yeah, like I’m gonna make you drive when you’re near to falling over,” he quips back. She just keeps smiling, curling up on a nearby bench.

It’s then that Genevieve comes again, slipping through the darkness until the flames of the fire are making a riot of light and shadow on her dress. Jensen nods at her, giving her a little smile, and she smiles gently back, coming over closer to him and Sandy. She sits on the ground beside them, face oddly shadowed in the weird light.

“Hi, Genevieve,” Sandy says, leaning up on her elbows. “Is Jared all right?”

Genevieve nods. “As well as could be expected, in any case. He is pleased Jensen found you, and that you are free.” She goes quiet a moment, looks into the fire with her ancient ocean eyes. “He said to tell you both he loves you, though Jensen won’t remember it.”

Jensen closes his eyes and tilts his face back to the sky, letting the cool night air soothe the smoky heat in his cheeks. He’s so--he doesn’t even know what to call it. Sick of feeling like he doesn’t know himself, with this hunk of memories missing.

“And,” Genevieve’s saying, “he did what you said to, Sandy, and I’ve brought it.”

“Oh, awesome,” Sandy says, sounding relieved. “Can you give it to me? Jensen, c’mere a sec?”

He opens his eyes and sits up to crawl over next to her. “What’s up?”

She’s cupping her hands around some stale-looking mess of breadcrumbs, tenderly, like she’s afraid of dropping even a single one. “Have you ever taken communion?”

“Uh,” he says, frowning and unable to stop his eyebrows from raising. “Yeah. Why?”

“Because that’s the best way to--it’s ritual, you see, so the transfer path is already worn; it’ll work easier that way.”

“Um,” he says, “I don’t really understand what you mean. Sorry,” he tacks on, feeling the truth of that one word in every atom of himself. He wishes they could have had someone who knows what they’re doing.

“Oh, gosh, sorry, I’m not explaining this very well,” Sandy says, face crumpling. “Okay, I asked Genevieve to see if she couldn’t get Jared to try and put a little bit of himself, your memories, in here. Hopefully if you eat it, you’ll start to remember some things.”

“Oh,” he says. “Uh, okay. You want me to kneel?”

“Yeah, that’ll be the best.” She stands and brushes off her jeans while he gets on his knees in front of her. She breathes in once, and breathes out evenly, “In the name of the elements and spirits, bless this.” She presses her hands close together for a second, before carefully stepping forward to tip the crumbs into his mouth. He closes his eyes and swallows.

First, nothing. The night silence flattens around him, and he wishes he didn’t have to open his eyes and tell them it didn’t work. And then a tendril of something starts brushing in his chest, in the back of his head--

 

  


The guy was tall and gazelle-graceful, but not lean; broad and strong, golden tan and ten million miles of legs with brown hair flopping into his eyes. He stooped over the chest at the window and trailed a gentle hand over the vines Jensen’d put in around the edge. Jensen fought back a sudden, incomprehensible blush, coughed, and called, _Hey, what can I do for you?_

The guy rose and came over to the counter. _Hi_ , he said, grinning down at Jensen.

Jensen’s breath caught in his chest. The guy had straight white teeth and _dimples_ for Chrissake, and he looked like Jensen was the best thing he’d ever seen, hazel eyes eager.

_Please tell me you guys did that chest, or know the place that did. Been lookin’ all over town for a place that’ll do something custom like that._

___Yeah?_ Jensen asked, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. _You're in luck, I guess. It's my work--did you wanna commission something?_

_Seriously?_ the guy said, and holy fuck the grin only got better; brighter and more beautiful, and the guy was leaning down into Jensen’s space. _You just made my day, man,_ said the guy.He leaned his elbows on the countertop and stuck out a huge hand. _I’m Jared._

___Jensen_ , Jensen said.

 

  
  


He opens his eyes, blinking in the flickering half-light. Sandy’s staring down at him, open expression of hope on her face. He shrugs and nods tentatively, and she lets out a long sighed breath of relief.

“Just the--first time we met, I guess,” he says. “He’s tall,” he adds before he can stop himself.

She smiles softly. “You should have heard him that day; he called me up and was all _oh my god Sandy I met the hottest guy_. Wouldn’t shut up about how green your eyes were, and your mouth. I teased him for weeks about it.”

Jensen finds his face has gone warm all over, and he just knows he has to be blushing up to his ears. He almost doesn’t mind, though, because if he’s gonna get the memories back, he won’t have to have this feeling of incompleteness lingering under his skin. And God--Jensen is one lucky bastard, if he really got to fall in love with and have that guy.

“Any idea if the rest’ll come to me?” he asks.

“It should. If it wasn’t going to work, you wouldn’t have gotten anything. So the rest will probably drift back to you over the next couple of days, but I couldn’t give you a time schedule, sorry.”

He shakes his head. “What’re you apologizing for? As long as I get them back, I don’t care how long it takes.”

“You’ll get them back,” she assures.

He nods, and they lapse back into silence. The night is a big dark shroud above them, strangely starless considering they’re outside of the city. He wonders, briefly, if Jared can look at the stars, wherever he’s being kept. His stomach twists a little, now, thinking of the tall, golden man from his memories kept up somewhere he can’t breathe in the night air.

“Come on,” he says, shaking it off. “We’ll be there in a couple of hours. I’d like to drive some more, I think.”

“I’m driving all day tomorrow,” she grumbles, but doesn’t protest.

 

  
  


He wakes Sandy up again when they’re in the city where Danneel lives, so she can guide him to her apartment building. It’s probably about seven when they roll into the driveway, bleary-eyed and yawning. He hasn’t been this exhausted since college, and he thinks he’ll probably let Sandy drive all day like she wanted to, because if he looks at another double-yellow line he’ll go crazy. Genevieve’s long since faded with the sunrise, so it’s just the two of them stumbling up the steps to rap on the doorway of the small house. Someone calls a sleepy “just a minute” from somewhere inside at that, and after a moment the door opens.

“Hi, Danny,” says Sandy.

A redhead smiles blearily at her from behind a cup of coffee, looking pleased to see her. “Morning, sweetheart,” she says, tugging Sandy in for a light, affectionate hug. “What brings you over so early?”

She pulls back and blinks at Sandy, eyes narrowing as she takes in the lank, trailing pieces of hair and the bags under Sandy’s eyes. “What happened?” she asks, and there’s a hint of steel to it that makes Jensen want to stand up a little taller, be ready to fend anything off.

Sandy takes it in like a champ, though, smiling gently up at the pretty girl. “We’ve got a problem, but you need to finish your coffee first.”

Danneel nods, but she looks more alert already. She starts to open the door, and notices Jensen.

“Who’s this?”

“Coffee,” Sandy insists. Danneel shrugs and lets them both in.

The first thing Jensen notices about her apartment is that it's absolutely buried in books. Every available space seems to have become the resting-place for at least one; stacks reaching up to his waist flank the entry hall, and out of the corner of his eye he can see a couch that's drowning in a waterfall of paperbacks. The coffee table’s not so much a table as another block of them. It looks like she's tried to shove a library into this tiny studio apartment, and almost succeeded.

It reminds him, weirdly, of the huge bookshelf in his apartment. Is it a magician thing, maybe? To hoard books? That would explain why he'd built a gigantic swath of shelves for a bunch of books he doesn't own. But Sandy doesn't have this many, so maybe Danneel and Jared just like to read?

He sets that question--among ten million others--aside for later. The rest of the apartment is clean and bright, and Danneel’s taste seems to run towards comfortable and colorful, with bright rugs set over any stained patches in the wood floors and little mugs full of daisies wherever there’s a bookless space. He can feel himself relaxing a little under the jittery electric feeling of too much coffee, which he’s been hitting hard to stay awake.

Danneel ushers them into a tiny, warm kitchen, which is wall-papered in maps. She forces cereal on Sandy and Jensen (“you can't have eaten in hours!”), and drains two more cups of coffee in quick succession while they eat. When she sits down at the table with them, her eyes are bright, and her limbs have renewed energy.

“All right,” she says cheerfully. “So I’ll repeat: what brings you here so early?"

Sandy swallows and sets down her spoon. She takes one of Danneel’s hands, and says, “Danny, Jay’s missing.”

Danneel freezes. “What?” she says, too evenly: like the calm at the edge of a storm. “Oh, fuck, you’re not kidding, are you. _Missing_?"

Sandy nods, face tight. “I think we have to move fast. I was captured and put into a story about a peacock king, and Jay was trying to rescue me, and he got caught. This,” she says, taking Jensen’s hand gently in her free one, “is Jensen.”

“Oh,” Danneel says, blinking out of her thoughts. She turns to look at Jensen, and shakes her head a little. “Well, God, wasn’t how I wanted to meet, but hey, Jensen.”

“Hey,” he says back, trying for a smile and feeling it when he can’t quite.

Danneel's still shaking her head, brown eyes a little wide. “So how’d you get out--?” she asks Sandy slowly.

“Jensen rescued me,” Sandy says. “With the help of some something that Jay sent, who’s called Genevieve. You’ll probably meet her tonight; she comes after twilight. But anyway, Danny, I did a little element twisting to try and find out where Jay is, how he’s being held, and it came out all--weird. We need your help.”

“Well of course you’re gonna,” Danneel said, nodding firmly. “Not going to rescue him without me, are you? Did it give you anything, or should we start all over?”

Sandy’s nose wrinkles. “Gave me a little something. Here, I wrote it down, but the most confusing part was where he was. Something like ‘between east west and sun moon?’” she says, fishing the paper out of her jacket.

It means something to Danneel, judging by the way she slumps forward. “What?” Jensen asks reflexively.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Danneel growls, anger burning on her face. “God _fucking_ dammit!”

“What?” Sandy demands, sitting up straigher. “Is he all right? What does it mean?”

Danneel slides off her chair and into the other room without a word. When she comes back, she'd holding a large silver instrument and and old-fashioned tin compass.

“Oh, he’s all right, for now,” she mutters, peering at the compass. “But he won’t be for that much longer, depending on what timeline they’re using. Dammit. East of the sun and west of the moon."

Jensen frowns. "Hey, isn't that from some fairytale?"

Danneel nods, mouth tight. "Originally, yeah. Now, it’s kind of a code for ‘nowhere you’d know,’ i.e. out of human reach."

"You mean they got someone to Shape an otherworld to keep him in?" Sandy bites out, eyes afire and fingers clenching into fists.

"Yeah," Danneel growls. "Just like you. Looking like this was targeted more every minute, huh? Look, I'm gonna go grab the book." She slips out the doorway and leaves them in the kitchen, Sandy tense with anger and jiggling her leg violently under the table, and Jensen more confused than ever.

"Sorry, an otherworld?" he asks.

Sandy grimaces and turns to face him. "An otherworld," she sighs, "is like an alternate dimension, a little pocket of space and time someone can create outside of our own plane. In an otherworld, things pretty much go wild--normal rules don't apply. Like, the Palace of the Birds, that was an otherworld."

"So they're places where stories come true?"

Sandy smiles ruefully. "Not that simple. They _can_ be, but not always; it depends on how they're created. For the type that Jared's trapped in, and I was, yeah, stories run them. First you need a Shaper--that's someone who can manipulate time and space. They're pretty rare, because most people who understand Physics well enough to get the principles behind bending dimensions usually are more of a question-everything type than the type who will easily believe in magic. Anyway, the Shaper will make the little pocket of space and time and connect it to our world, this one. Then you need a Symbolrist--you told me the door was open to the Palace of the Birds' world yesterday, right? They must have caught Jared at it, at opening the door. Symbolry's the only way to open paths like that. Then, if you want it to follow a story, you have to get a Storyteller to bind a story into the place." She sighed. "And then you get a Directionalist--who can get something lost for _good_ \--you get a Directionalist to make it impossible to find."

She traces a knot in the grain of the table, shoulders curled in. "That's another part of the reason why Jared and I--and eventually Danneel--would have been targeted," she admits softly. "You need three people to open an otherworld and we think--well, I might be a Shaper." She blushes a little and shrugs. "No one's sure yet. That takes longer to cultivate than other talents. But it often links with Alchemy. And if the three of us together could open otherworlds, we'd be dangerous. You see? Because otherworlds are used a lot in wars, and we've already worked together, so we're attuned. We'd be a priceless weapon." Her mouth tightens. "Hence, people on the opposite side wanna take us out."

Jensen blinks, mind whirling. These people--these other magicians are _vicious,_ crueler than that goddamn Peacock King. He can't wrap his head around it at all; feels pale and useless in the face of it. He reaches out to cup her hand in his, squeezing gently and wishing he had the words to apologize for a world where something this wrong can happen.

Danneel whirls into the room, then, flipping through a worn leather volume impatiently. “Here we go. East of the Sun, and West of the Moon. Girl gets married off to a white bear; you have your typical _don’t look at your husband when he’s in human form at night_ rule, which she breaks, naturally, by dropping three drops of candle wax on him. Then he gets taken away into forced marriage to a troll girl, or something, depending on the version. The castle’s east of the sun, and west of the moon, which of course the original girl doesn’t know where is and can’t get to. So she asks a woman; she doesn’t know, gives her a gift, sends the girl on to her two sisters, who give her things too, and suggest she ask the winds. Blah blah, girl gets taken by the North Wind to the castle and rescues the prince by selling her possessions .” She sighs explosively. “Thousands of variations, one of the oldest ones out there. Yeah, basically, the gist of it is, ‘east of the sun and west of the moon’ means someplace impossible.”

Jensen frowns and leans back in his chair. “Well how the hell’re we supposed to get there, then?” he says, trying not to let any of his anger into his voice.

Danneel flips through the pages with a frustrated hand. “If it follows the norm, it’ll be just you by the time you get to him; you started the quest, you hafta end it. But as to the how--“ she turns to Sandy, whose eyes are caught on the book in Danneel’s hands. “Sandy. We’ve gotta get to Jeff. This'll need Windspeaking.”

Sandy nods blankly. “Yeah, you’re right. Okay. You’re coming with?”

“Do you even have to ask?” Danneel growls. “Gimme five minutes. We can switch off driving.”

Sandy nods, and they wait while Danneel heads to a room in the back.

“You guys are really, really close, huh?” Jensen asks finally to break the silence, staring out of Danneel’s tiny kitchen window.

“Yes,” Sandy replies calmly. “We grew up together. Danneel's parents were killed in the war, when she was six, and she went to live with Jeff. Jeff trained all of us, so we've been together forever.” She shrugs. “The three of us, we’re a team, you know?”

She shakes her head and draws idly on the table. “These past few years, it’s been weird living so far apart. That’s why I moved down near you guys. It was only a couple weeks ago. We wanted to be closer together, because we’re stronger as a team, playing off each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Danny was gonna move in in a month, and then we could all be close enough.” She smiles wryly at him. “Jared didn’t wanna make you move away from your carpentry place.”

Jensen feels a hot curl somewhere in his chest, and purses his lips. “Wish I could remember that,” he admits.

“It’ll come,” she says serenely.

He smiles at her, and says, “Thanks, Sandy. It’s been--really good to meet you guys. I can see why Jared loves you two.” He tacks an awkward shrug on, but it's true--something in him's warm, just being here.

She grins back at him. “You’re gonna love us too. You’ll see.” She crinkles her nose at him and says, “We’re irresistible.”


	4. Chapter 4

He laughs a little, and is still smiling when Danneel sticks her head out of the doorway to pierce Sandy with a look.

“I forgot to ask,” she says intensely, “did you give Jensen anything?”

Sandy frowns as she thinks. “No, I don’t think so?” she offers.

But Jensen’s thinking too, and he remembers what he’s got in his pocket. “Uh, don’t know if this counts,” he says, “but the keys to the Impala, remember?”

“Ooh, I’m glad you remembered that. It definitely counts,” says Danneel, leaning against the doorway with a far-away look in her eyes, clearly lost in thought.

“Counts for what?” Sandy asks, confused.

“He’ll get three gifts on his journey, to help him,” Danneel explains. “No matter the story, that almost always happens, even if people don’t mean it to.” She smiles a little wryly. “The Impala’s his trusty steed, see? And I bet Jeff’ll give him a weapon . . . “ she trails off. “That leaves protection to me. Okay.”

She disappears back into the room for a moment and emerges with a backpack and a strange red coat hooked over her arm, despite the fact that she’s wearing a jacket. The reason becomes clear when she hands the coat to Jensen.

“It’s magic,” she says. “Impervious to a lot of damage. It was my dad's.”

He remembers what Sandy said, about her parents, and shakes his head. “No, I couldn’t possibly take this from you,” he protests.

“Too bad,” she replies steelily, smiling and patting him on the chest. “You’re going to. It’s a gift, okay? You can’t refuse it, that’d be rude.”

She presses it into his hands with all the import of the world, brown eyes piercing his. Her shoulders are set, rigid as stone, and her face reads trouble if he doesn't take it. Jensen knows when to give up. He nods and pulls it closer to him gingerly. "Thank you, then," he says softly, and she smiles.

It's beautifully crafted, made of thick, fine wool in varying shades of red and stitched with a pattern of concentric circles. He feels every inch of dirt and grime on him when he looks at it, so clean and well-made. It has two complicated frontpieces, which he thinks must cross in the front, but--

"Hold out your arms," says Sandy, taking it from him.

He does, and Sandy gets back behind him to loop the frontpieces over his shoulders. Danneel takes them, and crosses them in a complicated pattern on his front. She passes them back to Sandy, who fastens them somehow in the back, so that the sleeveless coat flows out behind him a little like a cloak.

"Take care of it," orders Danneel.

“I will,” he promises as it settles over his shoulders, heavy and sure.

“Good,” she says. “And keep the keys close to you. It’s a good thing I have another set, or you’d have to drive the whole way.”

“He’s been driving all night,” Sandy protests. “He gets to sleep now.” She pats Jensen’s shoulder, and he resists the urge to laugh.

“That’s why it’s good I have another set; if he gives them back, it’s not a gift anymore. Moot point, though! Let’s get going, while it’s still early. It’ll be a long drive.”

“Where’s Jeff live?” he asks.

“Up in Washington, in a cabin,” Danneel says, “so over a couple state lines.”

“Which _you_ ,” Sandy says, “are not going to see, because you’re going to be asleep.”

She hustles him into the back of the car while Danneel’s laughter rings down the stairs. He rolls his eyes and smiles at her. “I’ll sleep, Sandy. See? Settling back to sleep,” he says, bunching up his windbreaker for a pillow.

“Good,” she says. “You deserve it. Close your eyes,” she orders.

He smiles and closes his eyes to please her, but he really is damn exhausted, so he’s almost asleep by the time Danneel gets into the car. He hears her chuckling and starting up the car as someone brushes hair off his forehead.

“Stop motherhenning him,” comes Danneel’s amused voice.

“I _like_ him,” Sandy protests. “He’s good for Jay. I can just tell. He’s just--good.”

“I think so, too,” Danneel says simply.

The warmth of their words settles in Jensen’s chest, and stays with him into sleep.

 

  


_Oh my God. Who is it?_

_Who’s who?_ Jensen asked, digging his gouge into the block of birch a little more deeply, careful to keep the line of the curve smooth and steady. His hands were cramping a little, but it was a pleasant ache, like the way his muscles felt after a really good long run.

Misha dropped a stack of papers onto his desk and actually _leaped_ back over a stool they were working on. Jensen rolled his eyes, knowing that if he looked up Misha’d be grinning. _Who,_ Misha sing-songed, _is the person you’ve got a cru-ush on?_

_A_ what? Jensen snorted. _Dude. I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: you are totally twelve and girl. I don’t have a_ crush _on anyone._

He blew gently at the shavings and brushed his thumb over the whorl he’d just finished. Good, even work, he noted with satisfaction. An ocean was beginning to take shape in the wood, looking alive. That was the trick of it: make the wood speak, not just dig some flat design into it and call it done.

_You totally, totally, do,_ Misha insisted, pushing himself up onto Jensen’s table without asking, jostling Jensen’s discarded tool belt over. _You totally have a crush._

_Get off my table, asshole_ , Jensen grumbled. _Before I stab you._

_No!_ Misha chirped, snatching up the side of the box Jensen’d already finished. His eyebrows flashed upwards, and he turned the piece into the sunlight so he could get a better look. _Wow, scratch that. This goes way beyond crush and into infatuation._ His voice was soft, devoid of the joking tone it’d held a moment ago. _Jensen, this is amazing._

Jensen ducked his head, focusing on the edge of a second wave. _Yeah? You think so?_ he wondered aloud. _‘Cause I wasn’t sure about the corners there, with the cloud banks--_

_No, it’s perfect. Who’s it for?_

Jensen frowned at the wood in his hands, and picked up a fine square of sandpaper. _A guy who came in on Friday? Standard commission, man._ He set to rubbing off the rough edges of the wave he’d just carved. The sandpaper made a rhythmic rasp in the quiet air of the shop, a sound as familiar and calming as that of his own breathing.

_No way,_ Misha said. He ran his fingertips over the constellations Jensen’d traced into the surface of the piece he was holding. _You’re doing that Thing you do when you like someone,_ he announced. _You’re making someone something as a token of affection._

_What?_ Jensen laughed. _I am not._

_You are!_ Misha leaned over, raised one practiced eyebrow as he tapped the table. _It’s your way of showing you care,_ he insisted. _It’s your_ Thing _. If someone’s got your stamp of approval, it’s guaranteed they’ve got a custom Ackles creation._

Jensen snorted. _You take an extra dose of crazy this morning, Misha?_

Misha rolled his eyes. _Joanna--mirror frame,_ he said, ticking off a finger. _Chris and Steve--like ten million guitar picks. Your mom has a veritable menagerie of little carved animals, and your dad has all those custom cabinets--not to mention your parents’ whole house is covered with random end tables and stuff. Josh has the bed you made for him and his wife, and Mac has her huge writing desk._ He spreads his hands. _Quod erat demonstratum._

_Quod I-think-my-Latin-makes-me-awesome-but-really-I’m-just-pretentious,_ Jensen scoffed, throwing a chunk of wood at Misha. Misha made wounded eyes at him, which Jensen ignored. _You make people stuff all the time, too,_ he said. _It’s kind of our job, dumbass._

Misha shook his head and looked at the piece in his hands again, seriousness settling back into his shoulders. _It’s_ my _job; it’s_ your _life,_ he said. _Wood’s how I make my living, yeah, and my art, but you? Wood’s how you_ talk _, Jensen. And if you’re working on something with this much care, it’s not just some random customer, it’s someone you think is important._ He grinned. _So I’ll say again: who is it? ‘Cause you either have a new best friend or you’re pining. And if you have a new BFF I’m going to have to murder them in their sleep for taking my cherished position, and then_ no one _will be happy._

_You made my hand slip, fucker,_ Jensen muttered, but he knew he was frowning a little harder at the wood than his minor mistake merited.

_You looove me, really,_ Misha crooned. _And it’s not my fault your hand slipped; it just knows the truth about your crush, and it wants you to share!_

_My hand wants me to--?_

_Spill! Tell me about this young man! I want to know of his intentions._

_Har har,_ Jensen said. _It really is for a customer, jackass. You can check it on the roster. He’s picking it up next week._

Misha rolled his eyes and threw his hands up dramatically. _Okay, whatever. If you want to be Stubborn McStubbornface, just go on right ahead. But I’m totally gloating at your gay wedding. Just so you know._

_You do that._ Jensen pursed his lips and squinted at the wood until Misha slid off the table and went back outside to the main area of the shop, singing some weird song about lathes and table saws. (He was used to ignoring Misha by now; he’d been doing it since second grade, so he had a lot of practice.)

He added in another moonray and cursed under his breath when he made the line slightly too thick. He set about turning it into a feature, spiraling a little curl of vine up against it on a whim.

. . . He didn’t really do that, did he, make someone something when he liked them? He scrunched his face up and thought about it.

Okay, Misha was right about Joanna’s mirror . . . and yeah, all right, pretty much everyone he loved had something he’d made them. But that made sense, didn’t it? He was a carpenter. He wasn’t great with words, if you asked him, but his hands--he was good with his hands. It was why he’d taken up whittling and woodwork in the first place. So when he needed a present for someone, or a thank-you, there was the obvious solution. And maybe that meant he was used to speaking through his work, yeah. But to say he had a _Thing_ , that he made something for everyone he wanted, like some twisted courtship ritual--

That he had a _crush_ on Jared--

Okay, so they _had_ ended up talking a lot on the phone the last time he’d called Jared to ask a question, about the box. And yeah, Jensen’s mind kinda kept flashing back to that white flash of teeth against Jared’s tan skin, and the giddiness in his smile, and--fuck.

He had a fucking crush on the guy.

He groaned, crushing the square of sandpaper in his hand.

_Do mine ears deceive me, or is that the dulcet sound of Jensen admitting he has a cru-ush?_ called Misha delightedly from the front room.

_Shut up or I'll_ make _you,_ Jensen yelled back, and sighed to himself.

 

  


_Jensen!_ Jared said, waving a huge, eager hand at him. _Hi! Misha and I were just talking while we waited for you to get in._

_Oh fuck,_ Jensen mumbled before his brain caught up with his mouth. _Uh, I mean, hi._

Misha snickered. _He doesn’t trust me with you, Jared. Doesn’t want me corrupting your innocence_.

Jared grinned back at Jensen. _I corrupted it all on my own, thank you kindly,_ he drawled, all Texas politeness and white, even teeth.

Jensen rolled his eyes to cover the way his stomach was twisting at seeing Jared--whole, real, _here_ \--in the shop again. _I knew getting the two of you together in one room was asking for the apocalypse,_ he sighed. _If you’ll wait just a second, Jared, I’ll bring what I've got so far out for you. And don’t you have someone else’s life to be meddling in, Misha?_

Misha gasped, hand splayed comically over his mouth. _Why Jensen, I’m wounded!_

_Not enough, clearly; you’re still breathing,_ Jensen muttered.

Jared’s delighted laugh bloomed in the air, and Jensen scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. _Uh, sorry, Jared. I’ll be right out._

He ducked into the back room and tested his cheek with the back of his hand, cursing internally when his skin felt warm. Goddamn his genes and his tendency to blush. Scowling, he wound his way around half-finished skeletons of furniture to the pieces of the wooden box sitting on his desk.

He stood before his desk for a moment, taking them in with a certain amount of pride. They were good, solid pieces of work, elegant in their sure lines. He’d spent a long time getting the rays of the moon just right, and setting the inlay on the sides, and he liked to think it showed. He nodded to himself and picked the pieces up, cradling them against his chest as he slipped back into the shopfront.Misha was off in the corner fiddling with the file cabinet, but Jared was still waiting at the desk.

Jensen swallowed. _Here they are,_ he said, laying the box pieces carefully on the counter and trying to calm his stubborn heartbeat. He tossed a half-smile in Jared’s direction, keeping his eyes on the table. _If it’s not what you wanted, we can discuss how I can fix it,_ he added.

Jared’s long fingers reached out to trace over the border of the top piece. _Jesus,_ he breathed, stroking it gently with just the pad of his thumb. His eyes were wide, and his soft lips gently parted as he turned the box in his hands. _Jensen, this is--Jesus._

_You like it okay?_ Jensen asked, hand fidgeting along the back of his collar.

_It’s_ perfect, Jared murmured, peering at the moon in the center. _No, man, this is--this is amazing. It’s beautiful, seriously._ He whistled low, eyes still locked on Jensen's work. _Wow. I don't even know what to say._

Jensen bit his lip to keep his grin to himself.

 

  


_Hey! Jensen! Wow, what a coincidence._

Jensen blinked and almost ran into the woman in front of him. _Uh. Hey, Jared,_ he said, sidestepping the mass of her frizzy hair carefully and trying to calm his stomach, which for some reason insisted on fluttering at the sound of Jared's voice.

_Hi!_ Jared smiled and shut his book, keeping one finger held delicately between the pages. _How're you doing?_ he asked.

_Good,_ Jensen said, frantically hunting for something appropriately social to say. Small talk really wasn't his forte; he hadn't even paid attention to the weather this morning, and he didn't know if Jared watched any sports. He felt really stupid standing there with his stack of books--flashback straight to high school and prom and he needed to say _something_ \--

_What are you doing here?_ his mouth settled on asking. He winced.

_Reading,_ Jared said, eyes glimmering with humor.

_Yeah,_ Jensen said, dropping his gaze to the ground and rubbing a hand across the back of his neck with a tiny grimace. _Guess I shoulda seen that one coming._

Jared laughed, and Jensen couldn't stop the way his heart leaped in his chest at the sound. It was just such a gentle laugh--reminded Jensen of stupidly sappy things, like sunlight on a summer day, or kids playing in the park, or wow, Misha would laugh at Jensen forever if he knew any of that. He cleared his throat to cover it, hoping he wasn't going red.

_What about you?_ Jared asked, teasing Jensen with a grin.

_Oh. Uh, checking out a few books I got on hold,_ Jensen said.

Jared's eyes lit up. _What are you reading?_ he questioned, shifting upright in the comfortable armchair he'd curled his huge body into and eyeing Jensen's books curiously.

_Um,_ Jensen hedged, glancing down at them.

What he was reading was fairytales; he'd always loved them. But that love of fairytales was a secret between him and librarians, or was _supposed_ to be. Grown men didn't read fairytales, after all.

He was on the verge of opening his mouth and making up some answer about reference books when Jared's eyes widened. He reached out to tap one of the books, eager as a kid. _Is that the book of stories collected by Italo Calvino?_ he asked, leaning forward to peer up at Jensen, hope and excitement tripping over themselves in his voice. _I_ love _those. Dude, read 'The Handmade King' first; the queen is_ crazy.

_You've read them?_ Jensen asked, staring. Jared nodded, and Jensen felt a flush of warmth go through his entire body.

_I'm kind of a huge dork for things like that,_ said Jared with a shrug, grin sparkling on his face. _I read every fairytale collection I can get my hands on. You like them?_

_Uh, yeah. Wow. I've never met someone who'd just--I mean, I guess I usually just think people'll laugh me out of town if I mention 'em,_ Jensen muttered. _Since, you know, not really a kid anymore._

Jared scoffed and shook his head, making a face. _Those people are idiots and missing out. Dude, do you read them annotated ever? Because I have this_ amazing _annotated version of some of the stories in Arabian Nights I could totally lend you._

_Yeah?_ Excitement was thrilling through his veins. _I've only read the crappy abridged version, when I was like, twelve, but--_

_Oh man, it doesn't even compare!_

_I know, that's what I've heard--_

 

  


It was the hands, Jensen thought, that got him first. Jensen was always noticing people's hands, because his own hands were his livelihood and his favorite part of his body. Jared had the most beautiful hands Jensen had ever seen: wide, strong palms and long, elegant fingers with delicate knuckles. And the arch of the skin between his thumb and forefinger--Jensen had to swallow, remembering it.

 

  


_I like watching you work,_ Jared admitted.

_‘Cause you got a hand fetish, right?_

Jared laughed--the one Jensen loved best, where he threw his head back and his whole body shook, the whole world dimming a little in comparison to his huge brightness. _I got a fetish for every part of your body, baby,_ he leered, hazel eyes glittering in the half-light.

_Wouldn’t recommend calling me ‘baby’ when I got a knife in my hands, Jay,_ Jensen said, waving said object vaguely in Jared’s direction and hiding his smile.

Jared only laughed a little again, then melted back into the couch, dimpled smile resting quietly on his cheeks. Jensen could feel Jared’s gaze fixing again on his hands after a moment, and he let it without comment, settling comfortably back into his work. By now he was used to Jared watching him. It made him feel golden, and _good_ , if he was being honest--knowing the warm weight of Jared was solid behind him somewhere, content to just watch Jensen do what he knew best.

_I like it_ , Jared said softly, after a while, _because you love it so much. Watching you is like watching a painter or going to the symphony. It’s art._ He paused, then added, wonderingly, _You put so much of yourself into it. It’s beautiful._

Jensen stared at his hands, now resting motionless on the half-formed chessboard, knife forgotten. _Come here_ , he said after a moment. Jared’s words were twisting into sparkling fire in his chest and he had to--he had to do _something_ before it burst out of him; sing it from the rooftops, or fly, or just pull Jared close to him and never let him go, never ever let him take back every amazing thing he’d given Jensen.

Jared slid his long body off the couch and padded over. He was wearing a pair of Jensen’s old sweatpants--grey and ratty and too small on him, fitting awkwardly no matter what Jared said--and a T-shirt with a cranberry sauce stain along the collar, because only Jared thought cranberry-sauce-and-mustard-sandwiches were delicious, and only Jared forgot he needed plates or napkins. His hair was ridiculously fluffy, like it always was if he blow-dried it after showering, and his eyes were a little puffy with sleep.

He’d never looked more perfect. Jensen could remember a lot of times when he’d looked neater or more polished, yeah, but he didn’t just want Jared when he was put-together; he wanted him like this, every possible way he could have him. Tired, dirty, angry, _whatever_. He wanted all of Jared.

He’d had some words in his head, a moment ago, but now they’d vanished. His hands were shaking, he noticed, but he reached one out anyway, just barely stroking his fingertips over the soft skin over Jared’s knuckles. Jared turned his palm over and laced their fingers together, smiling a sleepily warm smile at Jensen.

_Move in with me,_ Jensen blurted. He closed his eyes briefly and opened them again to stare at their hands, biting his lip. _Uh._

_Really?_ Jared asked. Jensen chanced a glance up at Jared’s face. His eyes were wide, lashes dark against his skin.

_If you wanna,_ Jensen mumbled. Jared hadn’t let go of his hand yet, his brain murmured frantically; that was a good sign, right?

And then Jared grinned his blinding grin, and squeezed Jensen’s hand. He threw a leg over Jensen’s lap and settled there, warm and heavy over Jensen’s thighs. _Yeah, I wanna,_ he said, and leaned forward and kissed Jensen hard, until they were both wrecked and panting with it.

 

  


_"The wedding of Briar Rose and the prince was celebrated in great splendor, and the two lived out their days in happiness,"_ finished Jared.

The words drifted through the fog of Jensen's mind. _Happily ever after,_ he mumbled, twisting under the hot sheets towards the fuzzy outline of Jared.

_Happily ever after,_ Jared agreed, shutting the book softly. He reached out and brushed his beautiful fingers very gently through Jensen's sweaty hair. _How are you feeling? You need some more water?_ he murmured.

_No,_ Jensen said, closing his eyes and leaning into the touch. _'M good._ _Sorry._

_Sorry for what?_ Jared asked, keeping up the slow comb of his fingers.

_Bein' sick,_ Jensen ground out. _You don't hafta--y'know. Take care of me._

_I want to,_ said Jared simply.

_Nah. Bet you got much better stuff to do than sit in this stuffy room,_ Jensen coughed. He squinted up at Jared and rasped, _Seriously, Jay,_ wishing he could tell Jared he'd already done more than enough, being here, being in Jensen's life at all, lighting everything up without even trying.

Jared leaned closer, till his face snapped into focus. His eyes were soft and a smile curved his lips. _Let me,_ he said, voice full and tender. He trailed his thumb over Jensen's cheekbone. _Just let me, okay? Go to sleep, Jen._

__

 

__

  
__

  
__

___We have to talk,_ Jared said.

Fuck, Jensen thought.

_We do?_ he asked, coming slowly into the kitchen. Jared was sitting at the table, shoulders hunched and looking nothing so much as like he'd swallowed a thunderstorm, eyebrows drawn low over his eyes and mouth crumpled in unhappiness. He nodded, not raising his eyes to meet Jensen's.

Jensen lowered himself into a chair at the table, pulse racing and throat locked. _What do we gotta talk about?_ he asked softly.

Jared let out an explosion of a sigh and threaded his hands through his hair. _There's something I haven't been telling you, about me,_ he said, very softly, glancing up to fix his eyes on Jensen's.

All kinds of horrible things flashed through Jensen's mind--I'm dying, I'm sick, I'm cheating, I just don't want you _\--_ but with a swallow he pushed them down into the hollow of his stomach, and forced himself to ask, _What is it?_

Jared shook his head. _There is just no easy way to say this,_ he muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. _I'm not sure you'll believe me. In fact,_ he laughed humorlessly, _I'm sure you won't, but. I, um._ A quick exhale. _I can do magic._

Jensen reeled back, shaking his head in confusion at the last thing he'd expected to hear. _Uh, what? Like card tricks? Okay, why do we--_

_Not like card tricks,_ Jared said, tightly.

Jensen frowned. _Like what, then?_

_Like, actual magic._ A pause, Jared's hands flitting over the table absently, picking at a spot in the tablecloth. _Fairytale kind of magic._

_What?_ said Jensen again, feeling ten thousand miles behind.

_Like,_ Jared said, squeezing his eyes shut, _I can change things into other things and open doors to places that don't exist and do things that should be impossible? That kind of magic._

Jensen stared at his boyfriend. Head ducked under his broad shoulders, scruffy hair in need of a wash, lip twisted under his teeth and body tense with unhappiness. _Jared,_ he said, and broke off, feeling a great wash of a grief and panic choking his chest.

_I know, I know,_ Jared rushed to add. _You think I'm crazy--_

_Well what else am I supposed to think?_ Jensen managed, clenching his fists. _Jared, stuff like that's not--_

Jared shook his head roughly, lips pursed. _It_ does _exist, I swear to you._ The fight goes out of him all at once, and he wilts down over the table. _I'll show you,_ he murmurs.

 

  


_How do you do it,_ he muttered, twisting the stick in his hands. There was a bare spot in the bark, where he’d been slowly grinding it off with his thumbnail.

_Do what? Magic?_ Jared’s voice was gentle over his shoulder.

_No,_ Jensen said, choking back a bitter laugh. He slashed a hand helplessly through the air. _You just--you always know what to fucking say, how to put things into words._ _I feel like ten kinds of clumsy next to you, Jay. I can’t--I’m not good at this. I_ don’t _know what to say. I don’t know what to say to you, how to explain . . . what I’m thinking._

Jared was quiet for a long moment, and Jensen stared up at the warm plane of stars, so far away and beautiful, and so beyond his understanding in any way. His gut wound itself into knots and he broke the stick into halves, then fourths, just for something to do, something to keep his mind from whirring, frantic, off into nowhere.

_I_ don’t _always know what to say,_ said Jared finally, and came to sit next to Jensen.

_I don’t always know what to say,_ he repeated. _Like--back there, for one. I had no idea how to--I mean--I’ve--_ he laughed, breath gusting into the clear night. His throat was bared to the night, and he _looked_ magical; wild and beautiful and all kinds of things that just made Jensen feel small and farther away.

_I’ve never dated someone who didn’t know,_ Jared went on. _I’ve never told anyone._ He paused, and picked at a cuticle. _Not just--I’ve never_ loved _anyone who didn’t know,_ he said quietly.

He slumped so his hair hid his face, but Jensen could picture the unhappy intensity of his eyes, the twist of his frown. They sat there, silence stretching for a moment, Jensen paralyzed.

_If you want to, I dunno, break up--I mean, I guess--_ Jared said finally, then spread his hands over his knees and gripped so hard Jensen could see the white bone of his knuckles. His shoulders hunched, and he just sat breathing, like he couldn’t quite manage to ask Jensen what he was thinking.

Jensen screwed his eyes shut, heart beating a storm under his skin. _Jared--_ he started, and made himself to go on, though he felt so far away from anything that made sense. _I’m pissed ‘cause you didn’t tell me, yeah, ‘cause it feels--no matter how irrational it is? It feels like you didn’t trust me, okay, though I know this’s gotta be bigger than that. And that, yeah, that pisses me off, but I’m--fuck,_ dammit _. I’m in love with you and just because I don’t get it yet and I’m freaked the hell out, no, no. No. You’re not--going anywhere, you got that?_

He pressed his teeth together, curled in over himself and ground his fists into his shins. _I love you,_ he muttered into his thigh, _and if it’s--I love every part of you, so_ make _me get it. I wanna--I wanna get it. If it’s a part of you, I’m going to get it, because fuck if I’m giving this up just because you didn’t tell me or what-the-fuck-ever. I’ll--I’ll get over it._

_Okay,_ Jared's thin voice said after a beat. _Okay._

 

  


_Hey. Where are you?_

_Um, laundromat_ , said Jared's voice through the phone. _Just thought I'd get some of the backlog done--_

_Come home,_ Jensen said, breathing out a sigh. _Woke up and you weren't--I thought--_

_No, no I'm--_ a pause. _Thought it wasn't fair on you,_ Jared admits, _thrusting it all on you at once, thought you might need some time to think about it._

_Well I don't,_ Jensen growled, crumpling the cord to the phone in his sweaty hand. _So don't make decisions for me, and come_ home, _dammit_.

_I'm coming,_ Jared said.

 

  


_So, uh. My boyfriend the wizard,_ he said, testing the words on his tongue.

_Magician,_ Jared corrected softly, picking at a spot on his jeans.

_Magician. Wait, there's a difference?_

Jared worried his lip between his teeth. _I dunno, I mean, people call it different things. But yeah, in America, it's magician. Makes it easier to blend in. If someone slips up you can just show 'em a card trick, and voila--instant cover._ He shrugged, and slid Jensen a glance through his hair. _Do you really--it's okay?_

And he looked so vulnerable, eyes fixed on Jensen with a delicate hope guarded carefully in his eyes, shoulders hunched in and one hand hovering halfway to his heart as if to protect it. Jensen fell in love with him all over again in that moment.

_Yeah_ , he said, moving into Jared's space until they were pressed as close as they could get, not even space for a breath between them, and kissing him with everything he had.

 

  


_Jared, if you don't do the dishes, I'm kicking you out._

_You wouldn't_ , called Jared cheerfully from his laptop. _My blowjobs are too awesome._

__Jensen cracked up in spite of himself, leaning against the fridge. _Oh yeah? I've forgotten,_ he called back.

Jared looked up and grinned, eyes smoldering. _Better show you again,_ he purred.

 

  


_Brought you coffee,_ he said, waggling the mug temptingly.

_I can see that,_ Jared said, leaning up for a kiss. He had bags under his eyes, and his mouth was pinched, but he still had a smile for Jensen. He reached out and took the mug, and Jensen took the opportunity to slip behind him.

Jared twisted his head to blink up at Jensen. _Hey,_ he said quietly, leaning into Jensen's chest and sipping his coffee.

_As soon as you're done with this final, we're goin' out,_ Jensen promised, stroking one of Jared's cheekbones.

Jared grinned tiredly. _Gonna take me someplace nice this time?_ he asked in falsetto.

Jensen smirked. _Think I'll spring for McDonald's,_ he said with complete seriousness, and kissed Jared again when he scrunched up his nose.

 

  


_I want you to meet them_. _Sandy and Danneel and Jeff, and everybody. My parents. You’d like them._

_Yeah?_ Jensen said, leaning his head against the window. _Think they’d like me?_

_Yeah_. _Yeah, they would._ Like it wasn't even a question.


	5. Chapter 5

_Dogs_ , Jared said.  
  
_Parrots,_ Jensen countered. _Cupcakes. Scuba divers. Why are we saying random words again?  
  
_ Jared rolled his eyes and leapt off the couch to hold the door open for Jensen, who had his hands full of ebony. _Dogs_ , he insisted, breath warm on Jensen’s skin. He snuffled a kiss into the junction of shoulder and neck, and Jensen twisted away, laughing. Jared caught his elbow to stop him from banging into the wall, and pressed a softer kiss just under Jensen’s ear. _We’re getting some, someday,_ he whispered, looping his arms around Jensen’s waist and shuffling them both awkwardly towards the table.  
  
_Are we now?_ Jensen asked.  
  
He set the wood on the table and turned in Jared’s arms to make it a real kiss, sliding his hands down to rest at the clean jut of Jared’s narrow hips, and stroking gently. He’d tried to make his voice as grave and questioning as he could, but he could feel both their smiles curling at the edges of the kiss. It was hard not to smile, coming home to Jared--hard to pretend he was anything but really fucking happy, right here.  
  
_Mmhmm,_ Jared hummed into the kiss, curling his whole arm around Jensen’s neck to keep him close. He pulled back and rested their foreheads together, grinning. _We are._  
  
_All right,_ Jensen said, smiling back. _You gonna let me go, now?_  
  
_Nope,_ Jared grinned. _Never._  
  
_Hmm, never, huh? Well, I have some pretty ingenious escape methods. I mean, I’m practically Houdini. You better watch out, because I’ll totally escape when you’re not looking._  
  
_Oh, is that right,_ Jared said, eyes sparkling. He leaned forward suddenly, and before Jensen could react, had him slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.  
  
_Jesus Christ,_ Jensen shouted, wracked with sudden laughter as he whacked at Jared’s back, hard enough to bruise. _Let me down, you fucking asshole!_  
  
_Never!_ Jared cried, stomping them down the hallway. _You’ll never escape me, now! I am Jared, ruler of the universe, and you shall be my queen!_  
  
Jensen just about lost it, laughing too hard to even fight back. He was still laughing when Jared tossed him on the bed, still laughing when Jared flopped down and draped his body over Jensen’s.  
  
_You should stop laughing_ , Jared ordered sternly, kissing at Jensen’s jaw and down his neck. He paused to look up, eyes wide with false gravity. _I’ll have you know I’m a powerful magician._  
  
_Oh yeah?_ Jensen asked, raising his eyebrows back through his laughter. _‘Zat so? Prove it._  
  
_Watch me make your clothes disappear,_ Jared intoned, and started unbuttoning Jensen’s shirt. Jensen groaned and smacked Jared's shoulder. _Abracadabra,_ Jared said into his sternum, grinning.  
  
_You are so ridiculous,_ Jensen said, but maybe it was a little stupidly breathless with how much he loved Jared. _C’mere,_ he muttered, tugging at Jared’s hair.  
  
Jared obliged, sliding up to kiss Jensen, little lingering presses of their mouths that just left Jensen aching for a firmer touch.  
  
_Love you,_ he muttered, feeling it all through him. _Love your stupid magician ass._  
  
_Love you too_ , Jared murmured, smiling at him, soft-eyed.  


  


  


When he wakes up, he’s disoriented as hell, blinking up at the roof of the car. After a moment, wakefulness settles, and he breathes slowly, trying to figure out what feels so different; like something in his him's fragmented. Then it strikes, sudden as a snake, and he bites back a gasp.  
  
He can remember--the way Jared grinned when he asked Jensen out to dinner, and the way his heart leapt in his chest the first time they kissed; fighting, sex, promises--it’s not everything, he thinks, but it’s almost--he swallows back tears at the intensity of it.

He feels Jared’s absence like a hole in his heart, now. Jared is--fuck, Jared’s _in trouble_ , Jared could be _hurt_ \--and he loves Jared, so much, and if anyone hurts him he will _rip their fucking hearts out_ \--

He takes a few shallow breaths, feels panic try to well up in him, winding through his blood, and presses it firmly down. _Now_ , he thinks at himself, nostrils flaring, _is not the time. Get to Jared, get to Jared and get him_ out _of wherever the fuck he is, and then you can lose it._ He grits his teeth and promises himself that yes, he'll get to Jared, because--the alternative is not fucking acceptable, he thinks, biting his lip and curling his hands into fists to keep from doing something insane.

“You okay?” comes Sandy's voice from the driver’s seat. He whips his head up, a little shaken, and meets her uncertain eyes in the rear-view mirror. Danneel’s in the passenger seat, dozing from the looks of it.

“Yeah,” he mumbles. His throat feels wrecked, his voice like barbed wire in the dark. He's too tired to clear his throat. “Just--remembered."

“Oh,” she says, very softly. "How are you--are you doing okay?"

He can hear the layers of her exhaustion under the worry in her voice, and see it, too, in the way her hands drape over the wheel. He glances out the window and finds it’s gone dark. 

“What time is it?” he asks with dry lips, ignoring her question, because if he has to talk about it, he'll fucking fall apart. 

“About eight,” Sandy says. “Genevieve’s come and gone. I told her to stay with Jared tonight, so he can keep his strength.” 

“What is she, anyway?” he mumbles, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "She can't touch us, you know--how does she get anywhere?"  
  
"Magic," Sandy offers, lips curling ruefully. "But more specifically, as to why she can't touch us, she's a sea sprite or nymph of some kind, I think? Not quite sure which. Symbolry’s good for calling things like that up, and Jared's always been especially good at it--but when you call a sprite or nymph, they rely on your energy to get anywhere, because they don't usually live in this plane, so it's like, it takes energy for them to just exist here.” He watches her bite her lip in the mirror. "Which is why it's better for him to keep her there. I don't even know how much longer he can hold her in this plane at all," she admits.  
  
“How’d he call a sea nymph up from a dungeon? Or wherever he is,” he says, wincing to think of Jared trapped-- _don’t think about it, don’t think about it,_ his brain chants.  
  
“I asked her--she says she’s from something Jared always keeps on him. They would have been careful to remove anything he could have used in the room, so it makes sense. Maybe that medallion you made him for his birthday?” she suggests. “That would’ve been easy to keep hidden when he was captured.  
  
Jared’s birthday had only been about a month into them officially dating, so Jensen hadn’t been sure exactly what to get him. Of course he'd bought some candy--Jared was a sugar freak, so that was easy enough, but that alone had felt a little too impersonal. Jensen’d been thinking about it one evening, carving a little circle of driftwood idly, and when he’d looked at what he'd carved, he’d thought instantly of Jared. It had a moon in the center of it, like the crescent in Jared’s box, and an ocean of tiny waves behind it. It had just been a scrap, small enough to fit easily in his curled fist, but on a whim, he’d added “To J from J” on the back and wrapped it up with the candy, sanded and polished to smoothness. Jared had been--there wasn’t really another word for it besides “touched,” curling it lovingly in his palm and running his fingers over the tiny grooves and saying _it’s beautiful, Jensen._  
  
“I hope so,” Jensen mutters. Knowing something he’d done was helping just a little, maybe--  
  
“Look, Sandy, can I drive for a while?” he asks desperately. “Need some, something to distract--“ he waves his hands like it’s no big deal, but if he doesn’t do something he’s just gonna keep going over Jared being in trouble in his head, and he’ll go--he’ll fucking go crazy. He presses his lips together and forces himself to breathe through the tightness of his stomach, and looks at her.  
  
“Oh. Of course, yeah,” she says, face softening.  
  
She pulls into the next convenient spot, and they trade places. He was right to think she’s exhausted; five minutes into the drive, she’s asleep in the backseat.  
  
The driving helps, a little. He keeps his eyes focused on the line in the center of the road and just pours himself into the motion of it, thinking detachedly about all he knows and remembers about magic, lip worried between his teeth.  
  
He pulls them into a rest stop at about half-past eleven, because he needs to stretch his cramping legs. Sandy's still asleep in the backseat, but Danneel wakes up after a few minutes, pushing the car door open and stumbling over to the rock he's sitting on.  
  
“Hey,” she says, carefully seating herself.  
  
“Hey,” he grunts. “Sleep well?”  
  
“Mmhmm. Where are we?”  
  
“Passed the border into Oregon a while ago; shouldn’t be more’n four hours till we get there, I think.”  
  
“That's what I thought,” she says, squinting up at the sky. “Good. We’ll make it by dawn.”  
  
“Should,” he agrees, “looks like it’s almost midnight. Hey, can I ask you a question?” he says, because one’s been nagging at him for a few hours.  
  
“Shoot,” she says.  
  
“So everything--everything ends up being a story, in the end? I’ve been trying to remember what--I already knew about magic, and I think--I think I was told something like that.”  
  
Danneel shrugs her coat in closer around her shoulders and turns to look at him, eyes just a gleam against the night. “Isn’t that basically the point of life?" she says quietly. "Yeah. Everything's a story; everybody’s done something you’ve done already. It’s all in the _how_ and the _why_ that changes it. Stories are like little grooves worn in your brain and soul--things naturally tend to follow patterns, you know, like seasons?" She waits for his nod. "Stories are like those patterns for life, that’s all. Things deviate in the direction of them, because the path’s already been worn.”  
  
“Huh,” he says, thinking hard. “Okay. That makes sense, I guess. And you--you control them? Magicians, I mean? Like you and--?"  
  
"You can't control them, per se," she says. "You can change things, though. That’s why they say humans have free will. You can pull a story out of shape and make it end differently.”  
  
He frowns, considering, and starts to ask, "So if--"  
  
A screech interrupts him, and he whips his head up at the noise. Sandy, too, wakes up in the backseat of the car, rubbing her eyes sleepily and leaning out the window with a frown. “Fuck,” Jensen laughs hoarsely, adrenaline racing, “what the hell was that, some freaky mutant hawk?”  
  
Danneel is not laughing. Danneel is staring into the darkness, openmouthed, when another screech comes. It sounds warlike, and Jensen shivers.  
  
“Ogres,” Danneel breathes. _  
  
Fucking hell_ , Jensen thinks. Fear courses through him, instant and strong. _Fuck._ The only experience Jensen has with ogres is video games, and he doesn’t think Y down left is going to have much effect on the real thing, somehow. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he mutters.  
  
“Do I _sound_ like I’m fucking kidding you?” Danneel demands, and no, she sounds like she’s freaking out. “Goddamit," she rushes, "they’ve probably been sent to stop us--" peering at her watch, "oh, _of course,_ it’s midnight. How fucking typical! Okay, okay, we can handle this. Sandy," she calls, "do you have anything good on you? Jensen, _get in the car and drive._ ”  
  
Jensen hurries to follow her orders, sliding in across the front seat with a squeal of rubber. She leaps after him and he turns the ignition, revving out of the lookout.  
  
Sandy’s fully awake now, looking sharp-eyed. She taps her belt and smiles grimly. “Just tell me what you want to do.”  
  
“One sec.” Danneel's wildhaired and wild-eyed, but just as focused. She fishes through her backpack for something, and makes a noise of triumph when she pulls out a comb, which she shoves into the back seat at Sandy. “Earth, please, and make it big,” she says.  
  
Sandy fiddles with her belt and pulls a little glass case free, tapping some kind of power on the comb. She whispers something to it, and if Jensen doesn’t imagine it, something in the car changes--just a feeling, like something’s holding its breath with all of them. Sandy grips the comb in her hand and leans up to the window. They can hear the snarls much closer now, yapping and clawing up out of the night into their eardrums, and Jensen’s palms are sweating on the steering wheel. Sandy hurls the comb out of the window and to the ground.  
  
Sudden, puzzling silence claps over them. Jensen almost stomps on the brakes when he looks in the rear-view mirror, because behind him, where there was nothing but ogre snarls a moment ago, is a long range of mountains, so tall they’re capped with snow and fir-trees. They go right across the road, as if they grew from the earth. An angry howl echoes into the night from somewhere very far away, on the other side of the mountains. Jensen’s heart stutters in his chest, and he manages to ask, “What--?”  
  
Danneel lets out a loud warcry; grins a shark-like grin and reaches out to clasp Sandy’s hand in celebration. “Fuckers have another thing coming to them if they think we’re gonna go easy,” she crows. Sandy’s grinning brightly, lighting up the car with the strength of it.  
  
“Was that the _comb_?” Jensen gasps.  
  
Sandy nods and laughs. “Alchemy,” she says cheerfully. “The art of turning one thing into another.”  
  
“Jesus Christ,” he whispers. “That’s some talent you’ve got there.”  
  
“Thanks!”  
  
Danneel's moving her hand into her backpack again and pulling out a water bottle and a pack of matches. “It’ll happen twice more; it always does," she tells Jensen. "Rule of three. By the third time they’ll die or we’ll be to Jeff’s, hopefully, but let’s give ‘em hell while we’ve got the chance, huh? What do you say to river and wall of fire, Sandy?”  
  
“Sounds awesome,” she chirps, and Jensen’s got to laugh, got to let a little bit of the crazy giddiness roiling in him into the night air whipping in through the windows. The girls laugh with him, and he’s struck by a little thought: _Maybe we can do this after all._  
  
He lets it hover there in the back of his mind, and doesn’t look too closely because he doesn’t want it to drift away into nothing. But it’s a help. It takes some of the weight off, and he breathes just a little easier. Jared's missing--his heart aches--but hey. He's not alone.  
  
It’s not any less terrifying the next two times it happens; each time, the ogres are almost on them before Sandy can throw the thing out the window, so close and real Jensen can imagine their teeth snapping through his neck. But when Sandy pulls up the wall of fire as dawn’s coming over the horizon, the ogres are caught for good. The three of them know, because they hear the defeated screams going up with the smoke, winding finally into the air.  
  
Jensen shudders and thinks for a minute about how much they must be suffering, then pulls himself out of it with a shake of his head when he remembers that the bastards tried to _kill_ them. It's hard to be anything but giddy with success, anyway, with Danneel and Sandy cheering like they’re crazy in the background. The thought that it’s possible to pull Jared from wherever he is strikes Jensen again, and he grins along with them.  
  
They take a break when they find a good place, in another little wooded rest stop. They deserve it, Sandy says, after the stupid ogres, and no one speaks up in protest. It’s a pretty little place; sunset’s just starting to dapple shadows from the pine trees along the ground in gentle patterns.  
  
Jensen’s been driving for the last few hours--he thinks he’s driven more these last couple of days than he has in his entire life and is pretty much ready to not drive for weeks--because he didn’t have the heart to tell the girls he didn’t want to. His legs are cramped as hell, so he takes a little walk to stretch them.  
  
He’s settled against a tree, resting, when the last memory he has of Jared comes to him.

  


_  
I don’t like it,_ Jensen sighed.  
  
_Jen, I know_ , Jared said, coming to cup Jensen’s hands in his. He stared into Jensen’s eyes, weary and earnest. _I know, but I have to go rescue Sandy.  
  
__That’s not the part I don’t like, idiot,_ Jensen growled. _Of course she’s gotta be rescued! I just don’t see why I can’t come with you._  
  
Jared blew out a sigh and tugged Jensen forward until their foreheads were pressed together. _You don’t get it,_ he murmured, nuzzling a warm kiss along Jensen’s cheek. His breath skittered over Jensen’s ear, and Jensen’s heart beat loud under his skin. _If something happened to you because of me? I’d never forgive myself._  
  
_So why don’t you get that I feel that same fuckin’ way, asshole?_ Jensen grumbled, shoving a little against Jared’s chest. He could tell already he wasn’t going to win tonight, though. Jared was as stubborn as a fucking mule when he got something in his head. Something _wrong_ , in this case-- _I’m not a goddamn damsel in distress_ , he added through his teeth, just in case Jared decided to see reason. _I could help you. I know I don’t have your kinda weapons, but I can hold my own in a fight._  
  
Jared hummed. _Well, I certainly wouldn't want you to be in distress, and I bet I know how I can make sure you aren't_ , was all he said, grinning into Jensen's neck and trailing his fingers teasingly down the zipper of Jensen’s jeans.  
  
_Fucker_ , Jensen muttered, ignoring the treacherous curl of arousal that twisted in the pit of his stomach. _Don’t think that’s gonna get you off the hook._  
  
But he’d wait for a better time to convince Jared he didn’t need to do this thing alone, he thought with a frown. If he pushed it now, Jared was just gonna get even more convinced. He sighed, drew Jared close and framed his face in his hands. Jared stared back at him--hazel eyes soft, almost golden in the fuzzy light coming through the kitchen window, like the flare of sunlight on water. Jensen stroked his thumbs over the points of Jared’s cheekbones.  
  
_This argument is not over,_ he murmured, then kissed Jared full on the mouth, pouring all the love in his body into it, tracing his tongue over Jared’s and closing his eyes and just thinking: _if I ever lose you I’ll fuckin’ die_. When they came up from it, Jared was panting and had that--that look on his face that Jensen could never put words to. Jensen’s heart was glowing in his chest; he could feel it like a star.  
  
_Just,_ he breathed, thinking of all the things that could happen to Jared. _Just--come back to me safe, okay?_  
  
_I will_ , Jared whispered, kissing his ear lightly. _I love you, Jensen._  
  
_Love you, too. Call if you need anything, okay?_  
  
_I will._  
  
He squeezed Jensen’s hands, gave him one last kiss, and was out the door.

  


  
When Sandy finds him, he’s throwing rocks at a hillside. There’s a spot where the dirt is crumbling, almost punched in from the number he’s thrown.  
  
“Jensen?” she calls from a safe distance, voice wavering a little.  
  
“What?” he growls, hurling another one at a clump of stubborn weeds still clinging to the hillside.  
  
“I just came to, um,” she says, “see how you were? Are you okay?”  
  
He grinds the clod of dirt in his hands, feels rage reach right up out of his stomach and grip his heart and _squeeze_ , strong enough to really burn--but then it’s like all the air goes out of him, till he’s nothing but empty. Because fuck, he can’t be mad at _Sandy_ , who’s so determined to set this right. And once he’s stopped the loop of anger, well. It feels a lot more like grief, instead.  
  
He stares fiercely at the ground. “Fine.”  
  
“You don’t sound fine,” she ventures, stepping a little closer.  
  
He mashes a hand over his mouth, grips the side of his cheek till he can feel his fingernails biting into his skin. Breathes.  
  
“I told him,” he says into the cup of his hand when he can manage it, “I told him to let me come. And he wouldn’t.” His voice sounds hoarse and inhuman.  
  
“Oh,” she says softly. He can hear a thousand layers of compassion in just the one little breath.  
  
“I told him to let me help, and he said--he said--“ he squeezes his mouth, drags his hand down to rest at his throat-- “he said _if anything happens to you because of me, I’ll never forgive myself_.”  
  
The anger snaps in him again, and he kicks hard at the ground, yells, “Well something fucking happened to--to-- _him,_ and I wasn’t fucking _there_! I was not fucking there!”  
  
“Oh, Jensen,” Sandy whispers, daring to come up to him, to put her little arms around his waist and rock him a little.  
  
“Goddamn bastard,” he whispers weakly, “that goddamn motherfucking _asshole_ \--“  
  
“Yeah,” she says, and he has to--he has to squeeze his eyes tight and bite his lip and try his hardest not to let the weight of his heart drag him down down down. It wells up at him, tries to leak out in gulps from his throat, but he stands there for long minutes, holding his breath and clenching his teeth and pressing it back. Because he doesn’t--they don’t fucking have time for this. They have to get to Jared, they have to get him _out_ of there--Jensen doesn’t have any fucking time to freak out, not now.  
  
After a minute, he thinks he has it under control, and pulls back a little so he can see Sandy’s face. Her look almost undoes him; so understanding, eyes wet, sweet smiling mouth turned down helplessly at the corners. But he keeps it in, mutters “thanks” from his dry, dry throat. She squeezes his arm and attempts a smile.  
  
“If it helps,” she said, “he’s--so in love with you. He didn’t do it because he doesn’t trust you or anything, I promise.”  
  
He lets out a shaky breath, shakes his head. “I’m gonna hafta hear it from him, either way. I’m gonna--we’re gonna have a long fucking talk.”  
  
She smiles, weaves her arm into his elbow, and starts to walk him quietly back to the car. “He gets a little stupid around the people he loves," she says. "You should’ve seen how he glared at the guy who wanted to take me to prom.”  
  
“Stupid ain’t the right word,” Jensen mutters. “Stubborn, pigheaded--“ he inhales sharply against the pain in his stomach.  
  
“It’s not your fault, you know,” she says calmly.  
  
“Yeah? Well it sure as hell feels like it is.”  
  
“If we’re going to blame the situation on anybody, let’s blame it on me, shall we?” she offers. “It’s me he was after, after all--me who got into that stupidly obvious trap and made him come to rescue me.”  
  
“Oh, come on, how could you’ve known? It’s not your fault,” he says.  
  
“I knew more than you do,” she points out. “So if you can’t blame me, you can’t blame you, either.” She smiles tiredly. “Jared’s a force of nature. Thinks he has to save everyone, you know?”  
  
“Got that right,” he sighs. “Jesus Christ.”  
  
They go back to the car, where Danneel’s waiting for them. “Hey,” she says. She eyes Jensen, then asks quietly, “You okay?”  
  
He shrugs and nods, a little tightly. “Remembered everything, ‘s all.”  
  
“Oh,” she says. Like Sandy’s, it’s filled with an acknowledgment and regret. She leans back. “Whaddya guys think, time for a group hug?” she says, eyebrows raised in challenge.  
  
That pulls a little smile out of them all, and Jensen sighs and leans against the Impala. “Just,” he says, “now I _miss_ the stupid fucker like hell.” He curls his hand into a fist.  
  
“Don’t we all,” Danny says. She slaps the car twice. “Well, I think I’m about rested enough. You guys wanna get on the road so we can find out where he is to kick his ass for doing this to us?”  
  
Sandy laughs. “Yeah. Let’s go.”  


  
So they keep driving up the coast, watching the hills change from gold to green. Jensen doesn’t know quite how long it is--he drifts in and out of sleep, and in and out of periods where he can barely breathe past the worry and love burning in the bottom of his stomach. It seems to him that the world is only half here; the rest is back in the past, with him and Jared, before these assholes kidnapped him. Time is sort of indeterminate.  
  
Eventually though, some time before sundown, they pull through the fog up a long forest road, to a big cabin set back in the hillside. The look of it through the windows almost calms Jensen down; it looks like a fortress, and a sanctuary, too, sturdy and proud, but welcoming. The air smells clean and fresh when he steps out of the car, and he can see why Jeff picked to live here.  
  
Sandy takes his arm and Danneel leads them up a staircase to a wooden door. Jensen whistles in admiration as he sees the door is covered in carvings of tiny animals. “That’s beautiful,” he says, stroking a finger over one.  
  
“It’s over a hundred years old,” Sandy and Danneel chorus, then laugh with each other as Danneel knocks strongly on the doorframe. They hear a couple thumps in the house, and then the door opens, revealing a smiling older man with amber eyes and a black beard. His smile widens into a grin when he sees Sandy and Danneel.  
  
“My girls,” he says, opening his arms to hug first one, then the other, pulling them close. He has a deep, gentle voice, which matches the sanctuary feeling of his house.  
  
“Hi, Jeff,” says Danneel, grinning.  
  
“What brings you here?” he asks, ushering the three of them inside. The place is simple--clean furniture, and no stupid knickknacks. Jensen ducks awkwardly through the doorway after the girls, feeling a little out of place. “No one called. It's not like you to leave an old man unprepared.”  
  
They sober. Danneel collapses into the sofa, and Sandy leans against the counter, looking up at Jeff quietly as he shuts the door. “Jeff," she says, steely-soft. "the war’s started up again, we think. And Jared’s been taken somewhere we don’t know how to get to without you.”  
  
Jeff drops gentle instantly, and straightens up, eyes burning so fiercely and powerfully that Jensen wants to shrink backwards. “Is he now? How’d he get there? Tell me the full story,” he orders, looking every inch the warrior.  
  
“Someone took him,” Sandy says tightly, glaring at the ground. “Someone took _me_ and trapped me, and he was coming for me, and someone took him, too.” She nods at Jensen and says, “This is Jensen. Whoever it was took his memories, but Jared managed to get this sprite or sending or _something_ to him and carry a message. He rescued me, and we’re trying to figure out how to get Jay, and Danneel says only you can, because it’s east of the sun and west of the moon.”  
  
“ _Damn_ ,” Jeff swears, low and heated. He shakes his head slowly. “Well, then. Guess it’s time for me to start consulting with the winds, ain't it?”  
  
Danneel sighs. “Sorry Jeff. I know where it is, I just--can't get anyone there.”  
  
“You would’ve ended up here anyway, and you know it," Jeff says, shaking his head. "It’s got to be three people helping the hero.” He shakes his head again, then looks at Jensen and smiles a little. “Well, this definitely wasn’t how I wanted to meet you, but it’s good to see you, Jensen. Really good.” He holds out a firm hand, which Jensen takes, smiling back.  
  
“Thanks, Jeff. I know--” he swallows, “I know Jared really wanted me to meet you.” Because he remembers now--Jared practically grew up in this very cabin with Jeff. Jeff's the one who taught Jared and Danneel to tell stories, and Sandy to mix elements; he’s like a second father to them all, and Jared respects him immensely. The only people Jensen cares more about impressing are Jared’s actual family, and that’s only by a little bit, because Jeff’s damn important. Jensen wishes he could make a good impression, but he's not great at them at the best of times, and especially not now, when all he can think of is getting to Jared. And a bed, because he could sleep forever.  
  
“We’ll talk more when this is done,” Jeff promises, smiling again. “I’ve heard a lot about you from Jared. For now, you guys should eat and sleep, okay? Tomorrow’s going to be a huge day."  
  
He turns to the girls, ruffles an absent hand over Danneel's hair. "There’s some chili in the fridge you can heat up, I think," he tells them. "You guys can take your old room, and Jensen can take Jared’s. Sorry to run off on ya, but I’m going to go start speaking to the winds, because we don’t have a second to lose.” He gives them all a last nod and heads up the stairs at a clip.

The three of them are exhausted, but Sandy manages to heat up the chili, which they eat at the kitchen table, huddled over bowls and staring off into space. It would almost feel normal--comfortable, even--if the thought of whatever's coming up didn't loom over them. Jensen's past the point of being able to concentrate, so tired his head feels like cotton and his body's begging him to put down roots.  
  
“When this is over,” Jensen says, to make them laugh, “I’m doing nothing but watch crappy daytime TV for a week, while Jared and me eat lots of ice cream. We'll just make fun of Oprah and Maury all day.”  
  
Sandy giggles tiredly. “I’m going to come hijack your hanging-out, because that? Sounds awesome.”  
  
“I’m just gonna _sleep_ ,” Danneel says, slumping over. “Feel like I’ve been existing off the McDonald’s coffee we’ve been getting these past few days.”  
  
They nod in agreement, and it’s quiet for a minute more, before Jensen finds himself saying something he doesn’t mean to, roughly, into the silence.  
  
“Don’t think I’m a very good hero,” he mumbles, rubbing a thumb over a knot in the grain of the table.  
  
Danneel snorts like that’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“Jeff said--I'm the hero in this story, right? But I'm not--don’t know magic like y’all do,” Jensen says, eyes on his hand. His lips must be connected directly to his heart, because they’re sure not stopping at his brain; he’s just speaking the truth, with no forethought. “I just do woodcarving. I’m a _carpenter._ Not anything glorious, like a knight or a prince. And I’m terrified of all this shit--I just want to be at home in bed, with Jared, and have none of this have ever happened."  
  
Sandy laughs tiredly and reaches over to cover his hand with her small one. “I hate to break it to you, Jensen, but none of that’s in the definition for hero,” she says gently.  
  
“No?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.  
  
“No,” Danneel says. “A hero is someone who does what has to be done for the people or things they love. It’s that simple, most of the time.”  
  
Jensen swallows and thinks of Jared. He’d do anything for Jared, no fucking question. “Yeah?” he murmurs.  
  
Danneel and Sandy both smile. “Yes,” says Sandy.  
  
Jensen feels their belief settle in his bones and nods, once, firmly. All right, then. He can do this. He can do this.

  



	6. Chapter 6

He’s not feeling that way the next day, though, when Jeff’s peering into the window of the Impala. Sandy and Danneel are standing at the cabin stairs, looking worried and small all the way over there in the dawn light streaking through the pines. Huddled together, Danneel's arm looped over Sandy's shoulders.  
  
Jensen’s got the keys clutched in his hands and Danneel’s dad’s coat on, and he's shaking, a fine tremor that'd get his hand sawed off back in the shop. Jeff’s gift is in his pocket. Adrenaline's setting his skin on fire, and he feels like he might throw up.  
  
“Are you sure that I won’t fuck this up somehow?” he asks.  
  
Jeff smiles. He looks worn through from lack of sleep--he was up all night, Danneel told him in a whisper this morning, talking to _wind_ \--but he's still strong and certain as granite when he looks Jensen in the eye. He shakes his head. “You won't fuck it up. You love him too much too, don’t you?” he asks Jensen softly.  
  
Jensen closes his eyes and nods, because--yeah. There’s nothing that’s ever been more true. Every atom of his goddamn body is crying out for Jared’s safety, and if there’s anything Jensen can do to ensure it? He’ll do it.  
  
“Thought so," Jeff says, clapping him lightly on the shoulder. "Now, remember,” he goes on, "when you whistle, the North Wind’ll come to you, he’s agreed. What you wanna do is, tell him you want to go to the castle east of the sun and west of the moon, and turn on the car, and, well, he’ll take you there. Whistle for him again when you want to come back--you _have_ to remember that part, or you won’t be able to, all right?” he warns, pinning Jensen with a glance. "That's not optional. If you don't do it, I'm--not exactly sure what'll happen, but it won't be good. You'll have to search for him for seven years, or stay silent till you wear out a pair of iron boots, or yeah, something awful. So whistle."  
  
Jensen swallows, nausea spiking in him again. “Got it,” he mumbles, gripping the wheel.  
  
“It’ll be all right,” Jeff says soothingly. “Bring him back to us, okay?”  
  
Jensen nods, once, and Jeff backs away from the car, arm raised in farewell. _It’ll be all right,_ Jensen repeats to himself, and opens his mouth to whistle before he has time to think about it.  
  
It wavers in the air for a moment and then suddenly it’s colder, somehow--the air sharpens like ice outside the window, winding eerily through the trees. _You called?_ says a voice in Jensen’s ear.  
  
He jumps in his seat and nearly bites through his lip. “I’d, uh. I'd like to go to the castle east of the sun and west of the moon, please,” he says, voice shaking only a little.  
  
_Easy as a breeze,_ says the voice, laughingly. Jensen swallows and turns the key in the ignition and starts forward, hoping it’ll work.  
  
He’ll never be able to describe it, later. It’s like a roller coaster made out of breathlessness and insanity--cold as snow, whipping him from side to side until it’s all he can do to just hang on, eyes shut tight and heart rioting. It lasts for some indeterminable amount of time, and then just as suddenly it’s gone, making the bottom of his stomach drop out as he drifts slowly to the ground in a different world. He opens his eyes.  
  
The place he lands has the same unreal feeling he remembers from the peacock palace, but this time it's achingly familiar. He's been dreaming of it for nights, after all: endless grass, white tower, senseless light. Everything washed in pale white, and the grass gleaming pure emerald, almost sparkling.  
  
Bright and airy and beautiful--too much so, a picturebook illustration. The leaves on the trees are too even and green, and the birdsong too pitch-perfect. The sun is shining too gently. There’s not a mistake in the place, and that same feeling of _wrongness_ settles over Jensen again, so strong it makes his skin buzz.  
  
He thinks the Wind agrees with him, because he sees it whipping the edges of the beautiful flower bushes as it touches him down behind the stables, blowing until some of the perfectly round petals fall off.  
  
“Thanks,” he whispers to it, and imagines he hears, _You’re welcome.  
  
_ Then he’s all alone in the otherworld.  
  
He has a minute of panic, because he has no clue what he’s supposed to do next. _Breathe,_ he reminds himself, laughing a little shakily. Then, _plan_ , because that’s what you do when you don’t know where to start building something. So he sits in the car and thinks, fiercely, concentrating on the thought of _Jared_ to spur himself on.  
  
_Take this systematically,_ he thinks: _I have to get inside. And the best way to do that is probably as a servant; no one pays much attention to them, no one questions extras in the kitchen._  
  
Okay, that’s simple enough. He looks around for some inspiration, and notes he’s near the vegetable gardens. Perfect. The rest'll have to wait until he gets inside and gets a lay of the building, but it's a start.  
  
He gets out of the car, keeping the keys but leaving the doors unlocked and a little open, just in case. With a quick glance to make sure nobody’s watching, he leaps over the low wall to the vegetable garden and starts picking carrots.  
  
When he’s got a big armful of them--perfectly conical and technicolor bright--he walks towards the castle, fighting his way through the knee-high grass clinging about his legs. It takes longer than it ought to, judging the distance, but he's not exactly sure distance means anything here, after all. He makes it eventually, and, avoiding the grand crystal gate, heads over to a smaller wooden door like he hasn’t got a care in the world, though his heart’s pounding painfully in his chest. He nods at the guards standing outside the doors and asks innocently, “Kitchen? I’m a new servant.” He jiggles the carrots in his arms.  
  
One of them shrugs under his heavy silver armor and motions the other to the side. "Through here,” he grunts.  
  
“Thanks!” Jensen says, smiling a sunny customer-service smile to hide the way his nerves are jangling like live wires.  
  
He moves forward and knocks on the door as best he can with his foot. It’s opened by a surly cook, pouchy and glowering at Jensen under a cap of steel curls. Something like blood's splashed over his dirty apron. Jensen swallows.  
  
“Carrot’s not on the menu tonight,” the cook says, squinting suspiciously at Jensen’s armful.  
  
“Oh, uh, these are for--uh, for her ladyship,” Jensen improvises, trying not to let his panic show on his face. _Jared_ , he reminds himself, and it’s an anchor he can hold on to. He manages a smile and an exaggerated wink at the cook. “For her, uh, _special problem_. From the wizard,” he adds, praying that sounds plausible.  
  
The cook’s expression changes from suspicion to plain old grumpiness, and something in Jensen crumples with relief. He silently thanks whoever’s watching out for him. “Come in, then,” the cook grunts. “You’ll be wanting to wash them and have a servant send them up, I gather.”  
  
“Oh, no,” Jensen scrambles, “I’m supposed to take them up to her personally. And, uh, wash them in milk before her," he tacks on, frantically pulling some long-forgotten detail of a fairytale from his mind. "Yeah, I have to follow the exact instructions the wizard gave me. Or the magic won’t work.”  
  
The cook snorts. “ _Wizards_ ,” he scoffs. “Right, then.” He gestures Jensen inside the low, dark room, busy as a hive, and slams the door on the guards. "Milk," he calls, motioning impatiently at one of the servants. A pitcher is taken from a cooling cupboard and brought to him, timidly offered up. He snatches it and thrusts it at Jensen. "Here’s a pitcher for you, then,” he says, glowering.  
  
“Thanks,” Jensen says, smiling again, and exits quickly before anyone can question him.  
  
He dumps the carrots in an umbrella stand as soon as he’s out of sight, but keeps the pitcher in case he needs an excuse. Then he stands, baffled and idealess and panicking, for a moment. The room he's in stretches on and on, seemingly for miles. This castle? It’s way huger than it looked on the outside, and he has no fucking idea how to find Jared.  
  
_“Genevieve,”_ he whispers quietly, desperately hoping, but she doesn’t appear. He clenches his fists in Danneel's jacket. He doesn’t even want to think about what that means, if Jared can’t hold her up anymore. But he’s--apparently, he’s on his fucking own on this one.  
  
He closes his eyes and tells himself fiercely, _Okay, think,_ think. _Fairytales. Where do they always keep the prisoner?_  
  
Dungeon or the top of the tower--a place where a person can rot and be completely forgotten, left and laughed about later when their bones are uncovered. He swallows, hard, and forces himself not to think-- _no,_ dammit. Tower or dungeon? he asks himself firmly.  
  
Tower or dungeon? Dungeon's more logical, but something in him's whispering _tower._ He presses his lips together and glances around. There’s a staircase at the end of the room, he notes immediately, twining upwards in a double helix. He'd bet that thing goes as high as the building; it seems like as good a place to start as any.  
  
He climbs the long flight of twisting stairs, skipping floors till he reaches a long hallway at the top. It’s somehow filled with chilly air; his breath frosts, it’s so cold. _Yeah_ , he thinks, setting down the milk and swallowing. There’s a black void of a door at the end of the hallway, where all the others are white as bone. Yeah. This looks like it has to be it.  
  
Urgency rears in him, and he hurries down the hallway before anyone can come up, before Jared can stay there a second longer than he has to, and opens the door before he can think better of it.  
  
In the middle of the room, there’s a huge tangled collection of threads. There are three colors: yellow, red, and black, all woven clumsily with each other into messy knots. They make a kind of net, which stretches from floor to ceiling and reminds Jensen of a spider web. There’s something about them--just something set off, itching in his skin, which he knows by now means something magic. It’s not a good feeling; he’s too hot with it, wants to leave the room and never look at this cage of string again. It’s pins and needles all over, and in his chest, too, aching--  
  
He closes his eyes and clenches his fists and thinks _I won’t go, goddamn you_ , shoving against the wave of feeling until it fades to bearable levels. He lets out a long breath of relief, because if the room wants to repulse him so much, it _must_ be where Jared is. _Jared_ , his mind whispers longingly, _JaredJaredJared,_ and his hands ache for Jared’s stupid huge palms, and his heart hurts.  
  
He swallows it down and walks forward, peering around the tangled net of threads. He can almost make out something--a lumpy black shape, hunched over in the corner. _Jared_ , he thinks again, stomach dropping into his feet and pulse racing. It _has_ to be.  
  
Then--paralysis. Jensen stands there for a moment, wondering what the best course of action is. Should he try to talk to Jared? But what if there’s some kind of voice-sensing crap? Maybe he should just try to undo the knots. They look pretty impossible, though--goddamn it. These people know this shit better than he does; how is he supposed to get around it, he wonders?  
  
It chokes him; he's so, so close, and he has no idea how to take the last three steps.  
  
In the story, the girl bargains for three nights, and the first two, the prince is asleep. Is Jensen going to have to do that, scream and cry and try to wake him up so bad the people downstairs can hear, like the girl in the story?  
  
He breathes slowly, trying to keep back frustration, and then suddenly he remembers something Danneel said to him. _You can take a story and twist it, make it end differently. That’s human nature; you can make choices._  
  
Jensen blinks and eyes the room, and remembers the knife Jeff gave him. The weapon Danneel said he needed, made of steel and gleaming wickedly. _Something to twist thi_ s _into,_ he thinks briefly, _knife, knots_ \--and a different story comes into his head at once. _Gordian Knot._  
  
The thought settles over him, and he finds he’s grinning, knows it’s challenging and angry, aimed at people who aren’t here like a fucking sword to the heart. _Okay, if you assholes want to steal him from me and try to trick me out of getting to him?_ he thinks. _Watch me shred this to pieces. Watch me turn impossible to possible.  
  
Just you fucking watch me._  
  
He takes the knife and whacks at the threads without any finesse. There’s a lot of them, but Jensen thinks the knife Jeff gave him must have some other magic on it, because it cuts through them like butter. They drift to the floor and drape over the figure in black’s shoulders, and the figure shifts and groans.  
  
“Jared?” Jensen whispers, stepping forward into the threads to put a hand to the figure’s shoulder. He pulls some of the string away, and his heart almost leaps out of his chest when the figure turns over and blinks slowly. Hazel eyes stares blankly up at Jensen, and then recognition comes into them.  
  
“Jensen?” Jared asks weakly, gripping Jensen’s wrist.  
  
Jensen finds he’s grinning helplessly, choking back tears at the sight of Jared whole and safe. “Hey,” he whispers.  
  
He’s not prepared for Jared to surge up and pull him down to the ground with him, or to clutch his face and press their lips together. He gasps, and Jared kisses him desperately, worry and love clear in the way he grips Jensen’s jaw and strokes clumsily through the hair over Jensen’s ears. Jensen’s heart soars in his chest, and he kisses back, kisses _I’m here, you’re here_ as relief surges powerfully in his veins. _I'm here. I found you._  
  
They don’t keep it up for long--Jared must be exhausted, because he pulls away after a second and pants harshly up at the ceiling, but Jensen’s blood is thrumming in him from it, and he grips Jared’s shoulders.  
  
“Don’t think,” he breathes into Jared’s ear, “that’s gonna get you off the hook.”  
  
“Oh, god, Jensen,” Jared laughs into his neck, but it turns into a choked-back sob, and Jared’s just clinging, taking these huge racking breaths against Jensen’s skin and pulling fistfuls of Jensen’s t-shirt into his hands.  
  
“Hey,” Jensen whispers. He wraps his arms around Jared as tightly as he can, so they’re pressed together with no space in between. “Hey," he whispers, "hey, hey. I gotcha. I gotcha.” He kisses Jared’s hair, lingering over the spot by the temple. Jared’s hair’s greasy and gross, but it doesn’t matter. He’s _here_. That’s what matters.  
  
Jared digs his fingers into Jensen’s back and laughs into him again, panting a little. “I missed you so fucking much,” he whispers back at Jensen. “I love you, I love you, _god_ , I love you.”  
  
“I love you too,” Jensen murmurs, “but if you ever do that again I will fucking _end_ you, and also we need to get the fuck out of here now."  
  
“Okay,” Jared mumbles, raising his face and leaning back to look at Jensen. There’s a million things in his dry, red eyes--relief, exhaustion, determination. But chiefly love. So much of it Jensen almost can’t breathe for a second, because God, again, Jared’s _here_ , Jared’s _all right_ , and Jensen’s got him in his arms to prove it.  
  
_Later_ , he tells himself, swallowing back a thousand things he’d like to say. _Get out, first._  
  
“Come on, this way,” he says, dragging Jared up off the ground. Jared stumbles, and Jensen pulls his arm over his shoulder. _Where it rightly belongs_ , he thinks fiercely.  
  
They creep down the hallway, and back down the set of winding stairs. The hallways are mostly empty, and Jensen’s glad they chose to do this _now_ , and not at midnight or in the dark, like people usually do. No one in stories rescues people in broad daylight, so probably no one’s expecting it--which is good, because Jared’s moving much slower than he normally does, stumbling and holding the wall and Jensen like he can’t stand on his own. It takes them about ten minutes to get down the back stairs and into the garden, where Jared blinks weakly in the sunlight. Jensen keeps his arms locked around Jared’s waist and tries not to concentrate on how much he’d like to crush the people who did this to him. _Escape first, vengeance later, maybe_ , he tells himself.  
  
“The Impala’s behind the stables,” he murmurs to Jared, who nods and stumbles with Jensen over rows of flowers.  
  
They’re almost there when something hits Jensen square in the back, completely unexpectedly, and he half-collapses under it.  
  
It’s a laser-sharp point of pain, right in his spine, and it spreads like fire through his skin. He’s gasping and gripping at Jared, trying to breathe, and something’s roaring in his ears, and he can see Jared mouthing his name with panic. Jensen’s heart aches and his limbs are as heavy as stone, but Jared’s face makes him remember what he needs to do. It’s not bravery, he’ll think later, but desperation--he forces them the last few steps to the car while the feeling burns in his veins, spreading to his hands while he fumbles out the keys, opens the door, and collapses inside. The last thing he has the mind to do before everything fades is whistle, weakly, for the North Wind, and hope Jared can fight off whatever’s there and get them the hell out.  
  


  
He wakes up foggily in a bed to voices, and something in him cries with relief when one of them is Jared’s. He doesn’t even care what they’re saying--he rolls blindly till his body collides with Jared’s, and buries his face in Jared’s neck, snaking an arm around his waist. Jared's solid, and warm, and God, _alive_. Here. Here with Jensen, breathing softly and trailing a reverent hand down his back.  
  
There's surely no better feeling in the world than this. Jensen can feel it lacing through him, golden and pure, and his heart's beating a glorious rhythm against Jared's ribs.  
  
“Hi, Jen,” Jared whispers into his hair.  
  
“You have no fucking idea how glad I am to see you,” he says into Jared’s skin. He smiles and lifts his head so he can look into Jared’s eyes. “Hi,” he says, and keeps grinning; can't seem to stop.  
  
Jared grins back at him, eyes wet. “Hi,” he mumbles, shakily.  
  
“You two are absolutely sickening,” says Sandy, amused, from the other side of the bed.  
  
Jensen laughs and leans up on one elbow to smile at her. She grins _blindingly_ back at him. “Hi, Jensen."  
  
“Hey, Sandy.” He reaches a hand out to her, and she grips it, hard, in her own.  
  
“You were _awesome_ ,” she says, fondly. “I’m so proud of you.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, smiling again and leaning back down against Jared, who curls a possessive arm over his shoulders. “So what’d I miss?”  
  
The air in the room goes a little colder; Sandy looks exhausted, suddenly, and Jensen can feel Jared’s body tense under his own. He smoothes a hand down Jared’s side, hoping to calm him a little, and frowns at the two of them. “What?” he asks.  
  
“Well, um. You were hit,” Sandy says. “By a spell. They caught you two leaving, and they threw something that should’ve killed you after you. Danny’s coat--it couldn’t fight it all off, but if you weren’t wearing it, well.” She swallows. “You probably would’ve died.”  
  
“Oh,” Jensen says quietly.  
  
“Yeah,” Sandy says. “Oh." She shakes her head a little. "You’re mostly all right, though, now. We managed to pull a lot of it off of you before it did any real damage. There should be some achiness and tiredness for days, but other than that, you’re pretty much good as new.” She glances at Jared, and he catches her mouth twist sharply before she smoothes it. “Jared might be in bed a little longer; he had to--he had to fight pretty hard to get you two out of there. Half-killed himself doing it, and he was already pretty weak from that net they had him in.” She goes quiet. “Scared us, when you two showed up looking like--like death warmed over,” she admits, trembling a little.  
  
“Fuck,” Jensen exhales. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think they were going after us; I should’ve been paying more attention,” he mutters.  
  
“Don’t you _dare_ apologize,” Jared hisses, clutching him close. Jensen blinks in surprise, and Sandy gives a surreptitious little shrug and mouths _sick_ at him when he looks questioningly at her, tapping her chest. Jensen nods slightly, and thinks he gets it. He curls reassuringly into Jared’s side, stroking his shoulder gently.  
  
“All right,” he murmurs, “I won’t. No more Mr. Nice Guy,” he adds jokingly.  
  
Jared's having none of that. “Good,” he mutters fiercely, and then, there's no better word for it: deflates. Jensen frowns and looks up at him, sees the sorrow written over his face and pooling in his eyes.  
  
“What is it?” he asks, leaning closer.  
  
Jared bites his lip and shakes his head. “Sandy,” he whispers painfully, eyes trained on Jensen, “could you leave us alone?”  
  
She’s frowning, too, sensing, like Jensen does, that something’s well and truly wrong. “All right,” she says slowly. “I’ll send Danny down in a while, okay?”  
  
“Sure,” Jensen answers for both of them. He smiles at her, a little worriedly. She returns it, then leans over to kiss each of them full on the cheek and says, “good night" before leaving the room, tossing one last glance over her shoulder at them.  
  
Jensen turns back to Jared the minute she’s out the door. Jared, who’s still looking like someone told him his dog died. “Hey,” he says, draping himself over Jared so he can curl his chin over Jared's shoulder. “What’s with the long face?”  
  
“Can we talk?” Jared whispers, swallowing like it pains him to ask.  
  
“Uh, yeah?” Jensen says, stomach churning. He pulls back a little and lies down so he can see Jared properly. “What’s up?”  
  
Jared rubs a hand over his face and somehow manages to look very small. “I just wanted to say I’m _so_ sorry for bringing you into this, Jensen,” he breathes.  
  
Jensen frowns. “What? Why? If you hadn’t, you’d still be stuck there.”  
  
“Someone would have found me,” Jared mutters carelessly, frowning like it’s unimportant. “And you-- _you_ would have been fine,” he laments, stroking through Jensen’s hair. Jensen narrows his eyes.  
  
“We’re _both_ fine now,” he says, firmly.  
  
“But think about what could have happened,” Jared whispers, anger clear in the set of his mouth. He shakes his head a little wildly. “Jensen, I think you should--“ he swallows again, and closes his eyes. “I think you should leave."  
  
“ _What?”_ Jensen demands, wrenching backwards.  
  
“You could’ve been _killed_ , Jen!” Jared snarls, eyes snapping open. “And it would’ve been my fault! That’s exactly why I didn’t want you to come in the first place!” he adds, scowling. “None of this would’ve happened; you would be _safe_ if it wasn’t for me,” he adds, edging into anguished.  
  
And Jensen is suddenly angry, so angry it feels like his blood is burning to dust with it. This is exactly the kind of thing Jared said before he left; exactly the same way Jared’s been keeping him at bay, not letting anyone in because he thinks he has to do everything _all by himself._  
  
“Jared, you do _not_ fucking get this,” he yells, so past caring about the noise level. “You fucking idiot. I _love_ you. And that doesn’t mean, like, temporary, it means I’m pretty much done looking for anybody else _ever_ , you moron. I would fucking die for you, okay? You’re worth that. And that means--goddammit, Jared,” he growls. “That means a fucking partnership, okay? We’re equal. You gotta meet me halfway on this one. You don’t hafta be the martyr-hero all the time. You can’t keep trying to make yourself be, like, the one above it all. You _can’t_. We’re a team, okay? And that means you _let me_ help you and you _ask_ when you need it, and I do the same."  
  
His gaze is boring into Jared’s. “And if _forgetting about you_ didn’t make me leave you, no fucking thing will. Okay? You know how much that would hurt, you asshole, leaving you? Worse than whatever they hit me with, ten thousand _million_ times worse, and _that_ would be your fault too, if you force yourself to--”  
  
Jared looks stricken, chest rising and falling sharply with each breath. “Jensen, I didn’t--I just--no, I don't want--“  
  
He grips at the comforter in his hands, but can’t seem to find the words to say what he wants to, for once, staring hopelessly at Jensen. Jensen blows out a breath of frustration and stumbles up, despite the noise of protest Jared makes. Something in his bones is aching, and he hates it. He paces shakily to the other side of the room and reminds himself that Jared’s been trapped for over five days. He’s not in his right mind. These things he's saying are coming from under all that, not reality. If Jensen’s exhausted, Jared’s probably ten times more tired. He takes a calming breath and turns back, focusing his eyes on Jared’s chest, right where his heart is.  
  
“Just--if you were me, huh, how would you feel?” he asks quietly. “Just think about that, okay? And go to bed. You need some sleep.” He scrubs a hand through his hair and tries not to glare at the floor, at the world for making this all not as simple as it is in the stories. “We’ll talk in the morning.”  
  
“Jen,” Jared says, looking breathlessly panicked, “no, can you, don’t go--“  
  
“I’m not _goin’_ anywhere, Jared,” Jensen says, suddenly so tired though he woke up not fifteen minutes ago. “Just gonna go sleep, ‘s all.”  
  
“ _No_ \--“ Jared protests, moving to get up.  
  
“ _And the prince was so exhausted from his journey that he fell into a deep sleep and did not wake till morning_ ,” says Danneel gently from the doorway, weight of magic hanging behind her words.  
  
Jared looks at her, sleepily betrayed, as he sinks down into the pillows and dreams. His hair fans out against the sheets, and the worry smoothes from his face. Jensen’s heart turns in his chest, and adrenaline drains from him.  
  
“Thanks,” he sighs, closing his eyes and opening them again slowly. “He just--he needs sleep,” he mutters, half to himself. “He needs sleep and he’ll be fine.”  
  
She comes into the room and gives him a quiet hug, leaning her chin on his shoulder as they watch Jared breathe evenly. “It’ll be all right,” she says softly. “He’s just a little crazy. What he said they did--it’s like draining the magic from you, it’s like a sickness. He’s all mixed up right now, can barely tell left from right. He’ll be able to think clearer as the days go by, and you two--you’ll be fine, trust me.”  
  
“Happily ever after, yeah?” he mumbles.  
  
She lets go and smiles down at Jared. “If he has anything to say about it, yeah. Don’t worry.”  
  
“I’m not,” he says, and really, he’s not. He’s pissed and hurt, but not worried. They’ll figure it out somehow, but not tonight. He’s way too exhausted to think--his bones are crying out for a bed, and his eyes feel drier than a desert. “I need to sleep, too. Not thinkin’ straight, you know?” he murmurs. “I’m gonna head down to the guest room.”  
  
“Good night, Jensen,” she says, then grins impishly. “Our brave hero. Looks like you pulled that off just fine, scaredy-cat.”  
  
He snorts tiredly. “Silence,” he orders, smiling, and stumps down the stairs to the noise of her quiet laughter. His smile slides off his face when he’s getting into the bed in the guest room, though, thinking of Jared’s face.  
  
It’ll be all right, he tells himself, swallowing, and hopes to God it’s true.  
  


  
When he wakes up, it's because he’s stiff from the stupid spell lingering in his bones. He grimaces and shifts, but it's no good. The dawn is leaking in from the edges of the blinds, grey and insistent. He sighs and forces himself into full wakefulness, stumbling off the bed and heading into the kitchen, because he knows there’s no way he’s going to get back to sleep, not now.  
  
Jared must still be worn out, ‘cause he’s usually up and energetic by this point. Actually, Jensen must be the only one in the house awake--he’ll bet Jeff is out somewhere, and the girls are asleep. The house feels very empty, and he makes coffee mechanically, thinking about everything that happened last night. Thinking about the whole last few days. The craziness of it. Holding a cold little knot of misery in him because of the stupid things Jared said last night; rejoicing, because the man he loves is safe and whole and getting better.  
  
He’s still working through waking up, sitting on the couch with a cooling cup of coffee, when he hears someone shuffle up behind him and lean down. He closes his eyes briefly and breathes in the familiar clean smell.  
  
“So,” Jared says, draping his arms over Jensen’s stiff shoulders and pressing his warm face into Jensen’s neck. Jensen stares straight ahead and doesn’t move a muscle, mouth tight. Jared doesn’t say anything for a moment either, doesn’t do anything but breathe. Then he says softly, “I was an idiot yesterday.”  
  
“Damn straight,” Jensen growls.  
  
Jared laughs, sounding a little defeated. “God, Jensen, I know I was. Wasn’t thinking straight.” He strokes a hand down over Jensen’s chest and lets it rest over Jensen’s heart. “And I’m sorry. Will you please, please look at me so I can apologize properly?”  
  
Jensen’s body relaxes a little, and he turns so he’s sitting halfway turned on the couch. Jared breathes a sigh into his neck, and keeping a hand on his shoulder, comes to sit cross-legged on it next to him.  
  
Jared looks tired. His eyes are smudged under with dark circles, and his skin looks a little loose. There’s a faint furrow in his forehead, and Jensen’s stomach churns. He wants nothing more than to say _it’s okay, it’s all right. Let’s forget about it. I love you._ He wants to reach a thumb out and smooth the furrow, and bury Jared in his arms and never let him go.  
  
But as much as he’d like to do that, well, all the things he said last night are true, ringing like iron in the light of day. He can’t let Jared do any of this shit alone, and Jared needs to _let_ him, dammit.  
  
“I’m so used to,” Jared starts, then sighs and shakes his head, settling further back into the cushions and gazes at Jensen. “I’m so used to doing everything myself that I’m not real good at asking for help when I need it," he admits. "Or, not even that; I’m not good at _wanting_ help. Not good at wanting help or sharing things like this with people. You know? I'm so used to thinking yeah, I can totally handle this on my own. I don't need to think about help, 'cause I already know the right decision, kind of thing." He lets out a short laugh and cants a glance at Jensen. "Too stubborn, as you've told me time and again."  
  
Jensen nods slowly, crossing his arms.  
  
Jared grips his knees. “'But you’re right. That’s not fair on you. 'Cause it’s not like--“ he gives a breathy chuckle-- “it’s not like just because I _love_ you I get to, y'know. Make all the decisions for us. Because we _are_ an us. A two-people,” he says, smiling a little wistfully. “And it’s not like just because I know more about magic, I get to pick what we do, now.”  
  
He fidgets idly with the edge of a fraying couch cushion, and Jensen bites his lip as he goes on, stumbling over the words a little. “And I’m not really good at that, and I’m sorry. I’m _so_ sorry. Because Jen, you gotta know, I love you.” He looks earnestly up at Jensen, and yeah, Jensen nods, thinks _yeah_. He knows.  
  
“It’s got--I just keep thinking I’m gonna protect everybody, but you’re right. That’s not a partnership. And I haven’t got any practice at it, but I’m--“ he looks up at Jensen, and his face is just blasted clean open. Jensen can see uncertainty laid out over his bones and hope throbbing in his heartbeat. His lips turn up at the corners, and he reaches out two fingers to touch Jensen’s foot. “I’m hoping that whole ‘you’re a stubborn asshole and need to come to your senses’ talk was a way of saying you’re willing to stick with my idiot ass even though I’m not perfect or even real good at this yet. And willing to help me figure out how to--have a partnership. A real one. You and me. Because I want that, more than fucking anything. You can fight with me, whatever you want; we’ll figure something out.” He bites his lip and looks at Jensen with those damn puppy eyes.  
  
“Dumbass,” Jensen mutters finally, gently. He takes Jared’s hand and places it on his hip, reaches out and strokes along the shaggy hair at the back of Jared’s head. Jared’s looking at him now like he placed the moon in the sky, and Jensen swallows and looks back, drinking in every detail he spent time not remembering.  
  
“Of course I’m willing to figure it out with you, moron,” he says. “Or did you miss that part, last night, when I said I was done looking? Anyway, not like I’m perfect, either.” He thumbs under Jared’s jaw and grins at him, too fucking happy to even try and tamp it down. “It’ll be all right. I mean, hell, we came out of the past few days almost unscathed, right? Anything else has gotta be a piece of cake. We’re gonna rock this,” he promises.  
  
Jared’s grinning blindly at Jensen. “I love you more than every single star in the sky, you know,” he says, quietly, leaning forward to press their cheeks together. “More than anything in the world.”  
  
“Yeah, well, right back atcha,” Jensen murmurs, heart beating loud and happy in his chest. “So. Guess that’s settled then. You’n me, huh.” He feels giddiness must be shining out of his smile fit to beat the sun, right about now.  
  
"You'n me," Jared agrees.  
  
They kiss to seal the bargain, and something like peace settles in Jensen’s stomach. It’s gonna be all right, he thinks, shifting closer. They’re gonna be fine.  
  



End file.
